REDUCED-SCALE STUDY OF LIQUID FUEL STORAGE TANK FIRE USING FIRE DYNAMICS SIMULATOR

Abstract

Most of the accidents that occur in liquid fuel storage tank parks are caused by fire. This paper presents a numerical study using Large Eddy Simulation through Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) for the simulation of liquid fuel (ethanol) storage tanks at different scales (real-scale 1:1, and reduced- scales, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8). This paper proposes correlations for flame height, and temperature profile and radiative heat flux profile in the region adjacent to the tanks. Correlations have as inputs the diameters of the tanks in real- and reduced-scale, temperature profiles and radiative heat flux profiles for a reduced-scale tank simulation, and then provide as outputs flame height and temperature profiles and radiative heat flux profiles for the tank in real- scale. Percentage errors of the correlations found in this study are lower than 2.0% and 0.6% for the maximum radiative heat flux and maximum temperature, respectively.