FLACS

FLACSDeveloper(s)| GexCon AS

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Stable release|

10.1

Operating system| Microsoft Windows, Linux
Type| Computational fluid dynamics software
License| Proprietary software
Website| www.flacs.com

FLACS (FLame ACceleration Simulator) is a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software used extensively for explosion modeling and atmospheric dispersion modeling within the field of industrial safety and risk assessment. Main application areas of FLACS are in petrochemical, process manufacturing, food processing, wood processing, metallurgical, and nuclear safety industries.

FLACS has dedicated modules to simulate gas explosion,[1][2][3] dust explosion and explosions involving chemical explosives like TNT. FLACS is also extensively used to simulate flammable and toxic gas dispersion.[4][5] It was applied in the investigation of many high profile accidents such as Buncefield fire,[6][7] Piper Alpha, TWA Flight 800,[8] and the Petrobras 36 platform.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Related software
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 External links

## History

FLACS software development started in-house in the early 1980s under the sponsorship program, Gas Explosion Safety (GSP), funded by the oil companies BP, Elf Aquitaine, Esso, Mobil, Norsk Hydro and Statoil. FLACS-86 was released to GSP sponsors in 1986. Continuous research and development from then onwards resulted in many commercial releases. In 2006, FLACS v8.1 was released to customers. Till then FLACS was developed for Unix and Linux platforms. In 2008, however, FLACS v9.0 was released for Microsoft Windows platform. FLACS v9.1 and FLACS-Wind was developed in 2010. A fully parallelized FLACSv10.0 (using OpenMP) with a new solver for incompressible flows was released in 2012. FLACSv10.0 also constitutes a Homogeneous Equilibrium Model (HEM) for two-phase flow calculations.

## Related software

* CFX (proprietary software)
* Fire Dynamics Simulator (GPL)
* OpenFOAM (GPL)
* KFX DNV GL

## See also

* Computer simulation
* Atmospheric dispersion modeling

## References

1. ↑ "FLACS Explosion Modeling | BakerRisk". http://www.bakerrisk.com/services/consequence-and-risk-analysis/computational-fluid-dynamics/flacs-explosion-analysis/.
2. ↑ "FLACS - Safetec". http://www.safetec.no/article.php?id=118.
3. ↑ "Porteføljer". http://www.forskningsradet.no/prognett-renergi/Nyheter/Nyhet/1253965946984?lang=no.
4. ↑ Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration approval of FLACS for LNG studies in USA http://gexcon.com/images/uploads/files/issue13_FLACS_Newsletter_2011.pdf
5. ↑ "GL Noble Denton expands its FLACS capability - GL Noble Denton - Engineering & Consulting - Safety and Risk". http://www.gl-nobledenton.com/en/consulting/flacs-capability-expansion.php.
6. ↑ Buncefield explosion study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDVdipBgKSY
7. ↑ "Buncefield investigation". Archived from the original on 2013-05-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20130520204238/http://buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk/. Retrieved 2013-07-15.
8. ↑ Sandia report on modeling TWA-800 tank explosion [1]

## External links

* FLACS official website
* GexCon AS (FLACS developers)

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