A full probabilistic Explosion Risk Analysis (ERA) is commonly used to establish overpressure exceedance curves for offshore facilities. This involves modelling a large number of gas dispersion and explosion scenarios. Capturing the time dependant build up and decay of a flammable gas cloud size along with its shape and location are important parameters that can govern the results of an ERA. Dispersion simulations using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are generally carried out in detailed ERA studies to obtain these pieces of information. However, these dispersion simulations are typically modelled with constant release rates leading to steady state results. The basic assumption used here is that the flammable gas cloud build up rate from these constant release rate dispersion simulations would mimic the actual transient cloud build up rate from a time varying release rate. This assumption does not correctly capture the physical phenomena of transient gas releases and their subsequent dispersion and may lead to very conservative results. This in turn results in potential over design of facilities with implications on time, materials and cost of a project.In the current work, an ERA methodology is proposed that uses time varying release rates as an input in the CFD dispersion simulations to obtain the fully transient flammable gas cloud build-up and decay, while ensuring the total time required to perform the ERA study is also reduced. It was found that the proposed ERA methodology leads to improved accuracy in dispersion results, steeper overpressure exceedance curves and a significant reduction in the Design Accidental Load (DAL) values whilst still maintaining some conservatism and also reducing the total time required to perform an ERA study. 相似文献
Frogs and toads commonly form large choruses around suitable breeding habitat during the mating season. Although often regarded
as a constraint on the acoustic behavior of signalers and receivers, the sounds of a chorus could also serve as an acoustic
beacon that allows some frogs to locate the breeding aggregation. Attraction to chorus sounds might be particularly important
for explosively breeding frogs. In these species, which often mate just one or a few days during the year, the timing and
location of breeding aggregations can be unpredictable because their formation often depends on local climatic factors, such
as rainfall or a change in temperature. I used laboratory playback experiments to test the hypothesis that male wood frogs
(Rana sylvatica), an explosively breeding frog, exhibit positive phonotaxis toward the sound of a conspecific chorus. Males were released
at the center of a rectangular arena with a speaker positioned in each corner facing toward the release point. In a single-stimulus
experiment, more males approached a speaker broadcasting a conspecific chorus than the three silent speakers in the arena.
In a two-stimulus experiment, more males approached a speaker broadcasting a conspecific chorus compared to the two silent
speakers or a fourth speaker simultaneously broadcasting the spectrally overlapping sound of a heterospecific (R. septentrionalis) chorus. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that male wood frogs could use the sound of a chorus as a beacon
to locate a short-lived breeding aggregation. 相似文献
Mechanical friction and impacts is still today a main cause of ignition of explosive atmospheres (ATEX) in the industry and this trend seems to be stable in time. This situation certainly results from a significant gap of knowledge in the underlying mechanisms so that the parameters to play on are not precisely identified. In this programme of European dimensions, the process of degradation of the mechanical energy into heat during friction and impacts have been studied.
An extensive experimental programme is presented to this end. The mechanisms of dissipation of the mechanical energy into heat during friction has been studied with rubbing machines in which a slider equipped with temperature sensors rubs against a rotating wheel. For impacts, a new device has been developed using a special “air driven cannon” to propel a projectile accurately up to 50 m/s onto an inclined target. A very significant effort has been reserved to the investigation of the ignition mechanisms, not only for ATEX but also for dust accumulations.
Some “simple” modelling is proposed on purpose of practical applications. For frictional situations, a critical rubbing power is calculated without any limitations about any lower boundary concerning the rubbing velocity. For “impacts”, the relevant parameter for ignition is not the kinetic energy of the projectile but its velocity and the nature of the materials. 相似文献
Daily total ozone observations made during 1985–1993 by both the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) flown on the Satellite
Nimbus-7 and the Dobson Spectrophotometer have been used in order to investigate the fluctuations of the daily broad-band
and spectral solar ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground. This investigation has been performed by employing a recently
developed parametric algorithm for the estimation of the spectral and broad-band solar ultraviolet radiation which takes the
total ozone variations into consideration. Total ozone reductions during the summertime from 1985 to 1993 over Athens, Greece
(37.6° N, 23.4° E), cause an increase in the ultraviolet irradiance which reaches the ground of 0.54 %, 0.98 %, 2.60 % and
0.79 % per decade for the months of July at 300 nm, 312 nm, 320 nm and UVB (280-320 nm), respectively. 相似文献