1. Improved blast capacity of pre-engineered metal buildings using coupled CFD and FEA modeling
- Author
-
Lisa Nikodym, James Wesevich, John Mould, Vincent Nasri, Darell Lawver, and David Milner
- Subjects
Computer science ,business.industry ,General Chemical Engineering ,05 social sciences ,Energy Engineering and Power Technology ,02 engineering and technology ,Management Science and Operations Research ,Vapor cloud ,Computational fluid dynamics ,Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering ,Finite element method ,Reliability engineering ,020401 chemical engineering ,Control and Systems Engineering ,0502 economics and business ,050207 economics ,0204 chemical engineering ,Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality ,business ,Food Science - Abstract
Current industry accepted methods for predicting structural blast damage to pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMBs) subject to vapor cloud explosions are quick and cost-effective to perform. However, they also tend to be overly conservative; while costs may be saved on analysis, the results may prompt unnecessary mitigation. This paper investigates the effectiveness of using more advanced computational techniques with increasing levels of refinement and sophistication to produce more realistic estimates of structural damage and corresponding human injury. The goal is to reduce the amount of over-conservatism in results and avoid the degree of costly mitigation measures that may be unnecessary. In this study, a typical PEMB is selected and assessed for selected loads using a variety of approaches of increasing analytical sophistication. The extent of building damage is determined by each method and the results are compared to demonstrate the benefit of each analytical method. The use of refined analytical methods is shown to estimate significantly less damage in the PEMB for the loads considered.
- Published
- 2018