Hazardous gas dispersion: A CFD model accounting for atmospheric stability classes

Nowadays, thanks to the increasing CPU power the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is rapidly imposing also in the industrial risk assessment area, replacing integral models when particular situations, such as those involving complex terrains or large obstacles, are involved. Nevertheless, commercial CFD codes usually do not provide specific turbulence model for simulating atmospheric stratification effects, which are accounted of by the integral models through the well-known stability-class approach. In this work, a new approach able to take account of atmospheric features in CFD simulations has been developed and validated by comparison with available experimental data. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.