Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

In order to elucidate a complicated accident of boat explosion, experimental and CFD investigations by using a 2-D small-scale chamber and a 3-D large-scale mock-up model are demonstrated. In case that a chamber is divided into several compartments having different locations of ignition and fuel sources, the explosion process becomes more complicated. In our 2-D chamber with three compartments, flame nucleus is initially established in the ignition compartment and propagates at the laminar flame velocity. After the spreading flame erupts through a narrow gap into next compartment, flame becomes turbulent and accelerates. As a result, the premixed combustion happened in the ignition compartment, but did not give significant pressure rise due to a low value of laminar burning velocity. The mock-up model and CFD model are used for verifying the actual boat explosion. The flammable limit of gasoline vapor in the ignition compartment is established in the 1.7th day to the 175th day since fuel was leaked from the fuel-source compartment. The experiments on vapor diffusion process are also compared with CFD results. The calculated concentration profiles on 2D and 3D model are fairly good agreements with the results of the experiments. Finally, the reproducibility test of the boat explosion was successfully carried out by the mock-up boat.