The role of turbulence in explosion vent system design

International audienceThe most commonly used method of protection is explosion venting. In its simplest form, a vent is an aperture in the top or side of a vessel to provide a means of pressure relief during an explosion in order to achieve a reduced explosion pressure Pred. The efficiency of this protection method has been proven by a large number of experiments and documented industrial explosions by which the explosion venting provided adequate protection. From these experiments several correlations have been established to design venting systems. When compared with realistic, less controlled experiments, it appears that the reduced explosion overpressures may be over predicted but also under predicted. During the last ten years, researchers have devoted significant effort and time to study this problem. The state of the dust cloud at ignition and more specificly the initial turbulence has been identified as being a major contributing factor. This paper aims at presenting a technique to take the turbulence into account when designing an explosion venting system