PREDICTING NATURAL VENTILATION IN OFFSHORE MODULES USING COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

Natural ventilation is one of the principal methods for maintaining safety onboard offshore installations. it is a method that is widely used because of reliability, simplicity and low coast. Recent advances in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and improvements in the performance coast ratio of engineering work stations has made it possible to apply CFD to design calculations for natural ventilation of offshore installations. This paper show the application of CFD to natural ventilation. The effects of variation in inlet boundary conditions in terms of turbulence parameters are shown and discussed with respect to the effect on ventilation rates. The consequent requirements for input to computations and turbulence models are also considered for various module blockage ratios and geometries. Buoyancy driven ventilation due to hot equipment is also demonstrated. Based on the above study the paper shows the clear advantages of using CFD in the design of natural ventilation methods. However, certain procedures and methods are recommended in order to achieve realistic results.