This paper describes the results from a series of fire tests that were carried out to measure the effect of defects in thermal protection systems on fire engulfed propane pressure vessels.
In North America thermal protection is used to protect dangerous goods rail tank-cars from accidental fire impingement. They are designed so that a tank-car will not rupture for 100 min in a defined engulfing fire, or 30 min in a defined torching fire. One common system includes a 13 mm blanket of high-temperature ceramic fibre thermal insulation covered with a 3 mm steel jacket. Recent inspections have shown that some tanks have significant defects in these thermal protection systems. This work was done to establish what levels of defect are acceptable from a safety standpoint.
The tests were conducted using 1890 l (500 US gallon) ASME code propane pressure vessels (commonly called tanks in the propane industry). The defects tested covered 8% and 15% of the tank surface. The tanks were 25% engulfed in a fire that simulated a hydrocarbon pool fire with an effective blackbody temperature of 870 °C.
The fire testing showed that even relatively small defects can result in tank rupture if the defect area is engulfed in a severe fire, and the defect area is not wetted by liquid from the inside. A wall failure prediction technique based on uniaxial high-temperature stress rupture test data has been developed and agrees well with the observed failure times. 相似文献
Hyporheic exchange is known to provide an important control on nutrient and contaminant fluxes across the stream-subsurface
interface. Similar processes also mediate interfacial transport in other permeable sediments. Recent research has focused
on understanding the mechanics of these exchange processes and improving estimation of exchange rates in natural systems.
While the structure of sediment beds obviously influences pore water flow rates and patterns, little is known about the interplay
of typical sedimentary structures, hyporheic exchange, and other transport processes in fluvial/alluvial sediments. Here we
discuss several processes that contribute to local-scale sediment heterogeneity and present results that illustrate the interaction
of overlying flow conditions, the development of sediment structure, pore water transport, and stream-subsurface exchange.
Layered structures are shown to develop at several scales within sediment beds. Surface sampling is used to analyze the development
of an armor layer in a sand-and-gravel bed, while innovative synchrotron-based X-ray microtomography is used to observe patterns
of grain sorting within sand bedforms. We show that layered bed structures involving coarsening of the bed surface increase
interfacial solute flux but produce an effective anisotropy that favors horizontal pore water transport while limiting vertical
penetration. 相似文献