In industrial settings we like to assume safety and smooth operations. But when workers are surrounded by complex machinery and assembly lines, that rare, dangerous and undesired event of an explosion has to be accounted for with utmost care.
Our team at Meadows Analysis & Design partners with our engineering clients to help avoid the unexpected event of explosions in many different circumstances.
Take for instance the circumstance where custom blending occurs between dry ingredients and chemicals. This is a volatile situation which requires engineering expertise to examine the conditions and limits that might cause an explosion.
In such a situation, we collaborate with our clients, understand their operating variables and get to work on the respective engineering analysis work. With chemical blending, we might run simulations of the pressures applied to the blending chambers and ducting equipment from a deflagration event.
A cyclone separator, like the one pictured above, can be analyzed to produce information on the weak design points. Based on the analysis, our team can modify the design to reinforce those areas and account for the rare explosive event.
One approach in our findings may be to create a sacrificial situation. Confining the pressure within a containing vessel that could be replaced in the event of an explosion can be cost-effective while creating a safety buffer for the high pressure situation.
On the other hand, if explosions are a high probability and common event, then the design requirements might steer towards a vessel that does not become unusable after an explosion.
In our simulation explosions we can use the maximum pressure achieved by the specific reaction, or an actual increasing rate to maximum pressure, to account for the rare event. If we focus on the rate of increase, we would use dynamic engineering analysis which adds extensive processing time to the computing simulation. The benefit is a more accurate simulation which includes inertial effects in the results.
Are there rare events that your production environment needs engineering analysis for?