Radiant heat feedback from a jet flame to the ruptured tank surface

Abstract

The gas leakage of high-pressure tank can easily induce a jet fire which could heat the accidental tank by radiative heat feedback. In this paper, a new facility consisting of a jet fire apparatus and a hemispherical tank was used to model the jet flame ejected from the ruptured tank. The jet flame geometrical features were systematically measured under different nozzle diameters, exit velocities and jet directions. The radiant heat fluxes were also measured on the ruptured tank surface exposed to the jet fire. Two kinds of thermal radiation models were established to predict the radiant heat flux field on the tank surface. The first model only considers the effect of momentum on the flame geometry as the Froude number is large at the nozzle exit, while the other takes both buoyancy and momentum into account for the low Froude number. The model prediction agrees well with the experimental measurement. Finally, using the thermal radiation model and the heat balance equation, the distribution fields of radiant heat flux and temperature are calculated for the ruptured tank surface.