Birk Albrecht M., 2016, Estimating Characteristics of Industrial BLEVEs and VCEs from Observed Condensation Clouds, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 48, 271-276.
It is known that the passage of a shock wave in a moist atmosphere can produce a condensation cloud that is briefly visible to the human eye. Recent accidents (e.g. Toronto August 2008) involving boiling liquid expanding vapour explosions (BLEVE) and vapour cloud explosions (VCE) have shown such condensation clouds. In this age where video footage of an explosion incident is the norm (i.e. from the smart phone of a remote observer, or from a security video camera) it is very likely that there will be visual evidence of explosions. This evidence may include the size of a condensation cloud from a shock wave. This paper presents an analysis that allows us to estimate the overpressure of the shock wave at the edge of this condensation cloud. In many cases we can also determine the distance to this shock overpressure from the video image. With this overpressure and distance data it is possible to estimate the energy of the explosion and the overpressure and expected damage at other distances. This could be very useful for accident analysis. Limited video footage of BLEVE tests is used to provide and limited validation the method.
