Numerical Simulation of Magnesium Dust Dispersion and Explosion in 20 L Apparatus via an Euler-Lagrange Method

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to investigate the explosion characteristics of a Mg/air mixture in a 20 L apparatus via an Euler-Lagrange method. Various fluid properties, namely pressure field, velocity field, turbulence intensity, and the degree of particle dispersion, were obtained and analyzed. The simulation results suggested that the best delayed ignition time was 60 ms after dust dispersion, which was consistent with the optimum delayed ignition time adopted by experimental apparatus. These results indicate that the simulated Mg particles were evenly diffused in the 20 L apparatus under the effect of the turbulence. The simulations also reveal that the pressure development in the explosion system can be divided into the pressure rising stage, the maximum pressure stage, and pressure attenuation stage. The relative error of the maximum explosion pressure between the simulation and the experiments is approximately 1.04%. The explosion model provides reliable and useful information for investigating Mg explosions.

Automated summary

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to investigate the explosion characteristics of a Mg/air mixture in a 20 L apparatus. The simulation results showed that the best delayed ignition time was consistent with the experimental results, indicating a uniform dispersion of Mg particles in the apparatus under the effect of turbulence. The pressure development in the explosion system was divided into different stages, and the relative error between simulation and experiment was small.