API RP 752 Building Siting Using F-N curves

摘要

An explosion overpressure analysis is a routine part of compliance with the American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice (RP) 752 and 753. A basic consequence analysis often attempts to demonstrate a few scenarios that may appear to have the most extreme consequences; however, these scenarios may also have extremely low likelihoods of occurrence. To have a better understanding of how likely as well as how extreme a consequence may be, risk-based analysis is often required. One method used for this is an overpressure exceedance analysis which uses overpressure results from many potential explosion scenarios coupled with the probability of each scenario. Using only peak overpressure to predict building damage as well as potential injury only accounts for half of the effects of an explosion. Pressure-Impulse curves can make better use of the explosion model's outputs (pressure and impulse) in order to predict building damage and possible injury of personnel. Using this type of analysis with a building damage-fatality relationship, an F-N style curve can be created which shows the cumulative frequency vs. the number of potential fatalities. This paper will discuss the method used to produce these curves, as well as the benefits and potential problems with this type of analysis.