30th November 2016
Abercus presents at the FABIG UK Technical Meeting:
New Insights into Risk Assessment
Democratisation of the probabilistic methodology for determining structural design loads for blast
Steve Howell and Prankul Middha presented at the FABIG UK Technical Meeting in Aberdeen/London.
Their paper, which focused on the democratisation of the probabilistic explosion methodology for determining structural design loads for blast,
is available for download here: pdf (without animations) - 9Mb,
ppsx (with animations) - 20Mb.
It is hoped that by sharing Abercus’ experiences, and through the smart application of simulation data management (SDM) tools,
the vast amount of predictive information that is currently generated during the course of a probabilistic assessment can be packaged and shared with the design team,
thus democratising the approach. This can improve the interaction between the structural engineer and (CFD) explosion analyst, which should lead to better, safer design.
Some major benefits of an automated SDM approach include:
- It can provide a robust, consistent method for the implementation of the NORSOK Standard Z‑013, provided the underlying implementation is openly documented
- It allows analysis data to be shared, democratising the approach and allowing the sensitivity of the exceedence data to many of the probabilistic assumptions to be investigated on-the-fly, in the company of the wider design team
- It enables 3D risk assessment information to be automatically compiled where, for example, the spatial variation of an explosion load can be presented across a structural target of interest, rather than just a single worst‑case load that is read from a traditional exceedence curve
- It can automatically map CFD explosion loads on to an FEA model so that the associated structural response can be simulated using one-to-one coupling between explosion CFD and NLFEA.