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Articles

Theoretical studies on fuel dispersion and fireball formation associated with aircraft crash

ORCID Icon, , &
Pages 2134-2163 | Received 07 Mar 2018, Accepted 25 Jun 2018, Published online: 18 Jul 2018
 

ABSTRACT

The accidental or intentional crash of an aircraft causes the fuel dispersion followed by a fireball formation that may affect the integrity of structures by thermal hazards. The fireball arising from the aircraft crash has been studied and analyzed using Eddy Dissipation Concept (EDC) combustion model in the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) platform openFOAM. The simulations have been performed with two methods. In first method, the fuel is injected in complete vapor form and in the second method, fuel is injected as dynamic fuel spray. The input to analyze fireball by dynamic spray model has been obtained from droplet spray model reported earlier (Shelke et al., 2018). The diameter and lift-off height obtained in CFD analyses are compared with a video footage reported in literature and it is found to be in good agreement. To illustrate the transient behavior of fireball, evolution of mass fractions of fuel and combustion products and developed pressure are studied. It has been found that both methods give similar predictions for fireball diameter and lifting height.

Abbreviations

CCPS=

Centre for Chemical Process Safety

CID=

Controlled Impact Demonstration

CFD=

Computation Fluid Dynamics

EDC=

Eddy Dissipation Concept

FAA=

Federal Aviation Administration

FDS=

Fire Dynamic Simulator

FVDOM=

Finite Volume Discrete Ordinate Method

GAMG=

Geometric Algebraic Multi Grid

HRR=

Heat Release Rate

NIST=

National Institute of Standards and Technology

NPP=

Nuclear Power Plant

NTSB=

National Transport Safety Board

OpenFOAM=

Open Field Operation And Manipulation

PBiCG=

Preconditioned Bi-Conjugated Gradient

PISO=

Pressure Implicit with Splitting of Operator

SMD=

Sauter Mean Diameter

TNO=

The Netherlands Organization of applied scientific research

VTT=

Technical Research Centre of Finland

WTC=

World Trade Centre

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