Proceedings of the Thirty-second (2022) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference
Shanghai, China, June 5–10, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-81-4; ISSN 1098-6189

www.isope.org

Numerical analysis of fire accident of upper platform module of GAS FPSO
Fangxin HU 1, Jiayang GU 2*, Xiaosen XU 2，Rong LI 3, Jiaping WAN 3
1. School of Ship and Ocean Engineering, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang Jiangsu, China;
2. Marine Equipment and Technology Institute, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang Jiangsu, China;
3. COSCO Shipping (Nantong) Shipyard Co. Ltd, Nantong Jiangsu ，China.

ventilated all around, once a jet fire accident occurs while working atsea, it is very easy to be affected by the ambient wind, resulting in thedirection, coverage area, and temperature of the flame being greatlyaffected. In a jet fire accident, it is very easy to be affected by theambient wind. This results in the direction of flame injection, coveragearea, and temperature being greatly affected, seriously threatening thesafety of the surrounding personnel and equipment. Therefore, the studyof gas FPSO in the working sea under the common wind speed and winddirection of the jet fire simulation, on the one hand, can observe theconsequences of the accident; on the other hand, through the simulationof the scope of the accident, can provide a reference value for the layoutof equipment on the module, so as to prevent and reduce the harm causedby fire accidents.

ABSTRACT
Offshore platforms play an important role in the exploitation of offshore
oil and gas fields. The fire accident of upper platform module will leadto the collapse of offshore platforms, life losses, economic losses,
environmental pollution and others major accident, which all need to bestudied thoroughly. The article conducts research on the distribution oftemperature and mechanism of structural collapse in fire condition.
The temperature field researches present that the distribution oftemperature field of deck is consistent with the area of flame. The hightemperature area of the deck locates in the projection of leak position on
the deck along the direction of the wind. The distance of the center ofthe high temperature and the projection of leak position on the deck is
proportionate to the wind speed, and the temperature field area isinversely proportional to wind speed because wind will improve theexchange of heat between the structure and air.
KEY WORDS: Upper platform module; Fire accident; Jet fie
simulation; FEA

Wei et al. (2014) pointed out that fires in offshore structures mainly
consist of jet fires from gas leaks and pool fires from liquid gas pools,
but there is less content on studying fires in open spaces (e.g., uppermodules of offshore platforms). Sun et al. (2017) conducted a methane
jet fire simulation study for a typical FPSO upper module platform by
FDS simulation method, giving the required computational airspace for
FDS simulation and proposing to judge the degree of flame load on theFPSO upper module by analyzing the flame style and temperature
distribution. Palacios et al. (2020) studied the flame style andtemperature distribution of horizontal and vertical jet fires through FDS
software simulations and found that in the case of vertical jet fires,
gravity slows down the vertical jet of gas, resulting in better integrationof the fuel with the oxygen in the air, thus making the gas leak moredangerous due to the greater thermal radiation. Donegan (1991)
analyzed the response of platforms under fire and conducted tests on
critical components to conclude that the main way in which flame loads
act on offshore platforms is by changing the strength and stiffness ofdifferent materials through temperature, leading to hazardous conditions.
Liu et al. (2018) proposed a method for solving the dynamic thermal
response of ship structures under fire scenarios by establishing aninterface between FDS software and ABAQUS software to map the dataof the temperature field onto a finite element mesh.

INTRODUCTIONGAS FPSO compared with conventional FPSO, its process after theproduct is mainly natural gas, its ultra-large high flow gas processing
module occupies a large deck area, leakage and fire risk is high, once
the leakage of fire, will bring a serious threat to the surrounding
personnel and equipment. For example, in 2021 a sudden fire occurred
on Pemex's E-Ku-A2 platform in the Ku-Maloob-Zaap field in thesouthern Gulf of Mexico, resulting in five deaths, six injuries and two
missing persons , and in 2015 a fire on the FPSO 'Petrojar Knarr', anFPSO operated by British Gas (BG) in the Knarr field in Norway, led toa production stoppage and caused huge economic losses.
As mentioned earlier, in the process of processing and compressing
natural gas in large modules, leaks are likely to occur, and when theleaked high-pressure natural gas encounters open flames, serious jet fire
accidents will occur. Since the modules are placed on the deck andThe target of this paper is the first GAS FPSO in China, and it is the3096