Impact of non-central vents on vented explosion overpressures

It is normal practice to use centrally positioned vents or single vents in most experimental work and in the application of explosion venting in industry. This work seeks to investigate the influence of non-central and multiple distributed vents on the explosion overpressure. A 10L cylindrical vessel of 460mm length and 162mm diameter (L/D=2.8) was used for vented explosion with free venting (without a vent cover). Three different vent coefficient (Kv) were investigated, Kv, 3.6, 5.4 and 10.9 for both non-central and 4 hole vents. 10% methane-air and 7.5% ethylene-air mixtures were investigated to determine the influence of the mixture reactivity. The position of the spark ignition was in the centre of the end flange opposite the vent. It was shown for the non-central vent that the flame speed upstream of the vent was lower than for a central vent and this reduced the mass flow through the vent, which reduced the overpressure and reducing the external explosion due to the lower exit velocity of the unburnt gas and hence lower external turbulence. The external flame jets downstream of the vent was influenced by the increase in characteristic length scale of the vent, which was changed by increasing the number of vents.