Dense-Gas Dispersion in Complex Terrain (PREPRINT)

Abstract

A dense-gas version of the ADPIC Lagrangian particle, advection-diffusion model has been developed to simulate the atmospheric dispersion of denser-than-air releases over complex terrain. In developing the model, it was assumed that the dense-gas effects could be described in terms of the vertically-averaged thermodynamic properties and the local height of the cloud. The dense-gas effects were treated as a perturbation to the ambient thermodynamic properties (density and temperature), ground level heat flux, turbulence level (diffusivity), and windfield (gravity flow) within the local region of the dense-gas cloud. These perturbations were calculated from conservation of energy and conservation of momentum principles along with the ideal gas law equation of state for a mixture of gases. ADPIC, which is generally run in conjunction with a mass-conserving wind flow model to provide the advection field, contains all the dense-gas modifications within it. This feature provides the versatility of coupling the new dense-gas ADPIC with alternative wind flow models. The new dense-gas ADPIC has been used to simulate the atmospheric dispersion of ground-level, colder-than-ambient, denser-than-air releases and has compared favorably with the results of field-scale experiments.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA585250

Entities

People

  • Donald L. Ermak

Organizations

  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Dense Gases
  • Diffusion
  • Diffusivity
  • Energy
  • Energy Transfer
  • Equations
  • Gas Laws
  • Gases
  • Ground Level
  • Ideal Gas Law
  • Particles
  • Physical Properties
  • Simulations
  • Thermodynamic Properties
  • Three Dimensional
  • Trace Gases

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aerosol Science/Aerosol Physics
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers