Computational fluid dynamics model based artificial neural network prediction of flammable vapor clouds formed by liquid hydrogen releases

The flammable vapor clouds formed by liquid hydrogen release potentially leads to explosions and serious fires. In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) model based on the back propagation algorithm was developed to predict the horizontal and vertical hydrogen diffusion distances (the maximum distance of flammable vapor cloud with a hydrogen volume concentration of 4% to the release source in downwind and height direction). For this purpose, liquid hydrogen releases were modeled using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, which was validated by experimental data. The single hidden layer ANN model used the wind speed, ground temperature, leakage duration, and leakage mass flow rate as input parameters. Then, the ANN model was trained and verified using 50 sets of sample data derived from the CFD simulations selected via the orthogonal experiment method. The results show that the ANN model well predicts the hydrogen diffusion distances, with the percentage error of the horizontal diffusion distance within 10% and the prediction error of the vertical diffusion distance less than 1.5 m for 90% of test points. The overall correlation coefficient between ANN predicted output and target results reaches 0.99329. Furthermore, the ANN model predicts four orders of magnitude faster than the CFD simulation and reduces the root means square error and the maximum relative error by more than 23% compared to predictions by the empirical correlation fitted from the CFD data. Then, the effects of the four input parameters on the diffusion distances were analyzed using the ANN model.

Automated summary

An artificial neural network model based on the back propagation algorithm was developed to predict the horizontal and vertical diffusion distances of flammable vapor clouds formed by liquid hydrogen release. The results show that the ANN model accurately predicts the hydrogen diffusion distances, with better speed and accuracy compared to the CFD simulation.