Citation

Tang H, Anjorin VAO, Morgan AJ, Wrobel LC, Barton IE, Fan Z. Fire Safety J. 2004; 39(7): 601-617.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Explosion suppression is often the preferred method of explosion attenuation in industry. The morphology development of suppression clouds is important for the design of necessary suppression systems. This paper presents a numerical and experimental investigation of the growth of powder dispersion as it expands from a discharge nozzle. A Lagrangian stochastic particle-tracking approach and the renormalised group k-[epsilon] turbulence model are adopted in the flow field solver for the dispersed and continuous phases. The flow fields coupled with the particle interactions are predicted. The dispersion characteristics of the expansion of the powder cloud through a pipe for short intervals of time are investigated. This was compared with (1) captured images from experiments, (2) experimental data, and (3) results of previous simulations. Particle positions along the jet are presented. The effects of flow rate on the development of the cloud and a comparison with experimental results are also presented. It is noted that the coverage of the powder cloud can be controlled by the flow rate of the jet, and the developing length of the cloud is more influenced by the flow rate of jet flow than the developing width. The good qualitative agreements achieved are useful for further optimisation of product design.