Heat exposure of process equipment is a complex problem area that has gained interest over the last years. The reason is that existing standards vague on the subject and operate with too low heat load compared to what has been found in experiments. It has also been shown that the subject is more complex than expected when the existing standards were formed. It has been clear lately that simple formulas will not cover all the aspects and variation of the phenomenon. It seems that multi physic simulations are needed to be able to predict the behaviour satisfactorily. VessFire is such a simulation system that can handle this problem and has been widely used the last years by several companies and projects. One of the major parameters that need to be modelled is the heat transfer phenomenon inside the equipment shell. This is a difficult task and it is not easy to find data for verification. This paper describes a number of experiments performed for verification purposes. The project was supported by The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway and is a result of the authorities’ need for better means in safety management as new technology is introduced. The simulation results show good agreement to the experiments and indicate that the simulation system gives a reasonably good representation of the phenomena.
Comparison between different standards on recommended heat loads from flames show great variation. In general, heat loads from flames do vary in space and are dependent on fuel and surrounding conditions. Recommended heat load in standards should be a characteristic heat representing the average exposure of an object. It is difficult to identify a characteristic heat load by measuring heat flux in local points of a flame. This article presents an approach for identification of average heat load from flame suitable for engineering purpose. The principle is to compare effects on a specimen by a known heat load, with the effect of an object exposed to a real flame. The article describes the experimental equipment together with some experimental results. To compare experiments with real flame exposure, the simulation software packages VessFire and Brilliant, are used. First the simulation software has been validated against the experiments documented in this paper. Then the software has been used to reproduce the effects on a specimen exposed to a real flame. This article further presents simulation results from both experiments and real flame exposure. The results of the simulations are in agreements with the experiments and give a good tool for identifying relevant heat loads. The real flame experiment is a test of a pipe according to the standard jet flame procedure described in [9]. The heat load from the real flame is shown to give the same influence to the exposed object as a constant uniform heat load of 180 kW/m2.
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