ABSTRACT
CFD tools have proven promising to perform analyzes of consequences in environments with complex geometry, as in the comparative study about the use of integral and CFD tools to evaluate cloud dispersion reported by Schleder & Martins (2013). Nevertheless, as reported by Plasmans et al. (2012), previous studies have shown that consequences analysis using CFD are frequently not easily reproduced and, in many occasions, large differences can arise between the simulation results when working with different tools and/or different CFD analysts to assess the same scenario. These problems stem from the fact that the simulation results can be very sensitive to the wide range of computational parameters that must be set by the user; for a typical simulation, the user needs to select the variables of interest, turbulence models, computational domain, computational mesh, methods of discretization, convergence criteria and boundary conditions among others. The boundary conditions, especially the atmospheric conditions, affect directly the dispersion; however, in most
1 INTRODUCTION
Specific models are used to evaluate the release and dispersion of flammable substances when an undesired event occurs; the determination of the dispersion features is essential to model the consequences such as fires and explosions. The consequence analysis is used to define the extent and nature of effects caused by such events and thus is of great help when quantifying the damage caused.
