Investigation of the hazardous area in a liquid hydrogen release with or without fence

Constructing a fence for potential liquid hydrogen leakage is a common protective measure to prevent the unrestricted spread, and critically evaluating the effects of a fence is essential for the safe use of hydrogen energy. Based on NASA's large-scale experiment of liquid hydrogen release, a 3D numerical model considering the existence of fence is proposed to study the dynamic spread behaviors of hydrogen flammable cloud and liquid hydrogen pool. The results show that the liquid hydrogen pool keeps a downwind radius of about 1.75 m most of the time during the release, and the hydrogen flammable cloud has a limit spread distance. Three cases are set to comparatively evaluate the effect of the fence, which are full fence, downwind half fence and no fence. Under the three cases, liquid hydrogen pools all evaporate completely within 5 s. Full fence scenario has the modest spread scale of hydrogen flammable cloud in the atmosphere but the longest duration for 86 s, and the upwind fence causes an easily overlooked hazardous region due to the vortex here, thus constructing a full fence is not an ideal strategy when the spread direction is constant. Just constructing a downwind half fence leads to the greatest spread distance of the flammable hydrogen cloud, which are 33.6 m and 68 m in vertical and downwind directions. No fence case corresponds to the smallest diffusion scale of flammable hydrogen cloud in atmosphere but the longest near-ground spread distance for 43.35 m. Four stages can be divided to summarize the entire life period of the flammable cloud for the cases with and without a fence, while three stages for the case with a downwind half fence.