Best practice guidelines in numerical simulations and CFD benchmarking for hydrogen safety applications

Correct use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools is essential in order to have confidence in the results. A comprehensive set of Best Practice Guidelines (BPG) in numerical simulations for Fuel Cells and Hydrogen applications has been one of the main outputs of the SUSANA project. These BPG focus on the practical needs of engineers in consultancies and industry undertaking CFD simulations or evaluating CFD simulation results in support of hazard/risk assessments of hydrogen facilities, as well as on the needs of regulatory authorities. This contribution presents a summary of the BPG document. All crucial aspects of numerical simulations are addressed, such as selection of the physical models, domain design, meshing, boundary conditions and selection of numerical parameters. BPG covers all hydrogen safety relative phenomena, i.e. release and dispersion, ignition, jet fire, deflagration and detonation. A series of CFD benchmarking exercises are also presented serving as examples of appropriate modelling strategies.