Abstract—As one of the most frequently occurring accidents in a petrochemical enterprise, a vapor cloud explosion (VCE) is likely to occur when the vapor cloud is formed due to the leakage of a major hazard installation (MHI) storing massive flammable and explosive media. In particular, a VCE in the storage area of petrochemical enterprise may cause domino accidents if it is out of control. Considering the safety and economy of large-scale accident experiment, this paper proposes a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction method to describe VCE triggered by MHI. The method describes 3D hazard characteristics of VCE based on the Netherlands Organization (TNO) multi-energy method. To enhance the sensing cognition of VCE, a 3D reconstruction system is developed based on the virtual reality (VR) idea. Finally, the system is applied in an actual petrochemical enterprise to simulate the dynamic effects and the consequences of VCE. The results show that the 3D reconstruction system is of lifelike and visual characteristics, which not only embodies the great practical application value of the VR technology in the field of safety engineering, but also provides references for safety management, disaster prediction, risk assessment, emergency response and safety planning of petrochemical enterprises.
Index Terms—Vapor cloud explosion, major hazard installation, virtual reality technology, three-dimensional reconstruction.
W. Chen and Z. Hu are with the Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China (e-mail: chenwenjiang@ncu.edu.cn, zhjhu2005@163.com).
W. Chen, Y. Yong and H. Su are with the Florida Atlantic University, FL 33431, USA (e-mail: chenw@fau.edu, yongy@fau.edu, suh@fau.edu).
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Cite: Wenjiang Chen, Yan Yong, Zhaoji Hu, and Hongbo Su, "3D Reconstruction of Simulated Vapor Cloud Explosion Triggered by Major Hazard Installation
," International Journal of Modeling and Optimization vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 266-271, 2018.
