Abstract
One of the main safety issues incorporates the risk of gas explosion. Active safety measures have been developed to prevent the incidents from leading into gas explosions. Though progress has been made, high overpressures associated with the gas explosion have still remained challenging. Lack of feasible solutions to protect the building ventilation openings from overpressures higher than 0.3 bar (4.4 psi) have resulted in designers trying to cope with the risk with plant layout design and forcing safety specialists to accept the risk to a certain degree.
Advances in gas explosion simulation have made it notable that blast wave will enter the reinforced building even from a small opening in a wall, typically an air vent. Even placing the air vent outside the line of sight of the blast wave will not solve the problem due to complex propagation and reflection pattern of the blast wave. Also manifestation of high overpressures has become more evident.
This paper discusses the various new possibilities offered by blast protection products for higher than 0.3 bar overpressure and multiple consecutive explosions protection. Attention has been given to the protection of ventilation openings in buildings as sufficient mitigation of explosion risks is required in order to sustain the operability of critical functions in emergency.
