Structural response for vented hydrogen deflagrations: coupling CFD and FE tools

This paper describes a methodology for simulating the structural response of vented enclosures during hydrogen deflagrations. The approach adopted entails full spatial mapping of explosion loads predicted with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool FLACS-Hydrogen to the non-linear finite element (FE) IMPETUS Afea solver. The modelling involves one-way coupling of pressure loads taken from either experiments or CFD simulations to the FE solver. The performance of the combined model system is evaluated for vented hydrogen deflagrations in 20-foot ISO containers. The work is part of work package 3 (WP3) in the project ‘Improving hydrogen safety for energy applications through prenormative research on vented deflagrations’ (HySEA).