Service - CFD Capability

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Abbott Risk Consulting CFD services provide safety support for the oil and gas industry. Arc has extensive experience in this field and has carried out a multitude of gas dispersion, explosion and airflow studies. Coupled with its powerful hardware and software resources arc has the capability to tackle any complex problem.

Operational Safety Studies

ARC can model a broad range of hazardous scenarios utilising modern Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques. Common studies undertaken are as follows:

• Gas dispersion
• Natural and forced ventilation efficiency
• Turbine enclosures
• Flare combustion
• Helideck wind environments
• Wind force on installations and substructures

Fire and Explosion Assessment

• Flammable gas dispersion
• Flammable gas cloud ignition, deflagration and blast generation
• Explosion frequency studies
• Pool and jet fires

Experience
Our consultants have applied their CFD expertise to numerous safety studies such as:

• Turbine exhaust plume dispersion over the crane cabs and helideck of an offshore platform.
• Entrainment of diesel exhaust gases into HVAC intakes.
• Prediction of overpressures caused by ignition of a flammable gas leak in an onshore processing plant.
• Modelling and design recommendations for an offshore helideck to ensure compliance with CAA guidelines.
• Determination of the impact of several pool fire scenarios on an FPSO.
• Analysis of gas turbine ventilation and leak scenarios.

Computational Resources
ARC’s powerful hardware resources provide fast and efficient execution of complex models.  A combination of cutting edge geometry modellers, meshing tools and in-house software allows simulations to be conducted on a diverse range of complex geometries.

ARC uses the world leading CFD package, FLUENT6, for dispersion, combustion and wind environment studies. The Harpoon meshing package is utilised to create efficient meshes of detailed geometries. AutoReaGas is used to predict explosion overpressures and blast wave propagation. Fire and Blast Simulations can be executed for a variety of structures including offshore platforms, FPSOs, FSOs and onshore process plants.

Typical applications include:

• Steady state and transient dispersion of toxic and flammable gas leaks.
• Flammable gas cloud ignition, deflagration and blast generation. Probability of exceedance curves can be provided as well as overpressure time histories.
• Pool and jet fires arising from the ignition of a flammable gas. Plots of elevated temperatures, gas toxicity, visibility and oxygen depletion.