Research on thermal response of pool fire of oil tank based on PyroSim

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical investigation aimed at studying the thermal response of adjacent tank caused by different fire conditions. The analysis involves two-step procedure:(1) PyroSim model to obtain the temperature and the inclination variation of the large pool-fire flame, to determine the ultimate temperature distributions of the target tank, and to compare the ultimate temperature and the fuel ignition temperature, thus to determine the target tank is safety or not,(2) There are three kinds of semi-empirical models for describing the radiation e.g.(i) point source,(ii) Shokri-Beyler and (iii) Mudan models, to determine thermal radiation flux of the target tank. The analysis considered the influence of two parameters: (i) seven kinds of wind, (ii) five kinds of distances between the tanks. The paper compares three kinds of semi-empirical models and PyroSim model, so PyroSim model is more fit for relationships between thermal radiation flux. The simulation results show that the maximum temperature of the target tank is the connection between the wall and the top of the tank; the target tanks have failure risk within 0.3D and 0.6D tank distances and the tank spacing greater than or equal to 0.9D have no failure risk.