Computer Simulation of Blast Wall Protection under Methane-Air Explosion on an Offshore Platform.

An in-house explosion program is presented to evaluate blast wall protection under Methane-Air Explosion on an offshore platform, based on two-dimensional, time-dependent, reactive Navier–Stokes equations including the effects of viscosity, thermal conduction and molecular diffusion. The results show that this program can successfully produce explosion process of methane-air gas cloud. Because the overpressure behind the blast wall and on the lifeboat plate is more than 1.0atm when explosion wave passes, the current blast wall is not enough to keep the person and lifeboat safe. So the blast wall needs to be re-designed. The explosion wave of methane-air gas cloud undergoes a successive process of detonation formation, detonation transmission, shock attenuation, regular reflection and Mach reflection etc. Additionally, due to high overpressure generated in gas cloud explosion, it is extremely devastating and must be avoided at all times on offshore platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]