Influences of a square and circular vent on gasoline vapor explosions and its propagation: Comparative experimental study

Abstract

Although vents' shapes influence the discharge coefficients, there is a lack of discussions of the vent shapes in vent design guides and explosion-venting investigation. This work carried out detail experiments in a 10 L cuboid vented vessel containing a circular or a square vent to investigate the influence of vent shapes on explosions where the dimensionless vent coefficients, initial gasoline volumes and vent locations are different. A discussion of the various characteristics of the explosion was presented and compared. Results show that the inner flame will continue to propagate and oscillate after flame ejected from the vent in the vessel, the oscillation of flame tip propagation under circular vent is larger than the square one. As gasoline volumes increase or vent coefficients decrease, the amplitude of oscillation enhancement increases. The Pmax and KG under the circular vents are little different from the square one under different dimensionless vent coefficients, initial gasoline volumes, and vent locations, indicating that the circular vents have almost the same venting effects as the square vents with the same vent area. The results may be meaningful for vapor explosion-venting and serving as a reference for the optimal vent design in practical applications.