FLACS - Dispersion
FLACS-DISPERSION is a subset of the FLACS simulator that have the capabilities of the FLACS simulator in the area of dispersion and ventilation, but with the explosion capabilities deactivated. Due to the ability to represent detailed geometries with the distributed porosity concept, the dispersion capabilities of FLACS have proven particularly powerful for calculating release scenarios in process areas, in which the density of objects and pipes is high. FLACS has been extensively validated against large-scale realistic release and explosion tests performed at GexCon and full-scale experiments carried out at Advantica test site Spadeadam in a 2600m3 semi-confined model of an offshore module.
Since FLACS is a dedicated explosion simulator, the dispersion models are very suitable for calculations of explosion cloud sizes and the use in explosion risk assessments. Recent work has been addressing the ability to simulate toxic release scenarios onshore, in which representation of terrain and turbulent wind profiles are important. Models for release and dispersion of aerosols are also under development, these can be added as a complementary option.
Capabilities include:
- Geometry import from CAD
- Various gases (More than 10 + user defined) and mixtures of these
- Wind boundary conditions with wind profiles
- Effect of water deluge on dispersion
- Efficient pre-processing, reasonable simulation times
- Export of gas cloud to explosion calculations (FLACS)
- Data to estimate transient ignition probabilities and cloud sizes
- Local gas concentrations and accumulated cloud estimates
- 2D and 3D field plots of various variables
- Automatic generation of mpg-videos from postprocessor
- Extensive validation (Phase 3B, Dispersion JIP, GSP, Licorefla, SMEDIS)
- And more
The tool will be suitable for companies interested in a well developed and validated dispersion tool suitable for representing realistic geometry densities efficiently. Also companies that would use other tools than FLACS for explosion calculations could benefit from using FLACS-DISPERSION to estimate likely gas cloud sizes in a process area.