PUBLICATIONS AND VIDEOS

The Phase 2 and Phase 3a projects showed that it is generally not practical to design an offshore platform against the 'worst case' explosion. Therefore, a risk-based approach for design against explosion hazards is needed, in which the risks are reduced to as low as reasonably…

The HSE funded project, known as Phase 3a, was conducted between May 1997 and March 1998 and comprised of 45 experiments conducted in a test rig representing, at full scale, an offshore module. During each experiment the test rig was filled with a gas / air mixture and ignited by…

The Blast and Fire Engineering Project for Topside Structures is one of the largest research projects undertaken following the Piper Alpha disaster to address key issues relating to the characterisation and mitigation of offshore hydrocarbon explosions and fires.

The first…

The Blast & Fire Engineering for Topside Structures (BFETS) Joint Industry Project Phase 1 was a large JIP carried out in the wake of the Piper Alpha disaster. It started in May 1990 to collate, appraise and disseminate information on blast and fire loads, and on the…

The Buncefield Explosion Mechanism Phase 2 JIP commenced in July 2010 and was completed in December 2013. It involved several test programmes and analytical studies to understand how vapour clouds develop following large losses of primary containment, the characteristics of…

The Buncefield explosion (11 December 2005) resulted in tremendous damage to the outlying area and huge fires involving 23 large oil fuel tanks. One important aspect of the incident was the severity of the explosion, which would not have been anticipated in any major hazard…