Hydrocarbon explosions and fires have been identified as major potential hazards in offshore installations. Extreme explosions and heat will pose serious consequences for safety, assets, and the surrounding environment. A number of explosion and fire accidents in offshore installations have occurred in recent decades killing hundreds of people and costing billions of dollars in property damage. Before the Piper Alpha accident, research into fires and explosions was only through experience and statistical analysis. Experts mainly focus on the lack of fire-fighting procedures and recommendations for their improvement. With the development of modern methods of quantitative analysis, more and more studies are done using modern computer technology. A lot of effort now has been put into the prediction and controlling of explosions and fires in offshore installations. Risk-based approaches, rather than traditional prescriptive approaches, have begun to be more extensively applied in offshore designs. This chapter will go into the detail of risk-based approaches.
[1]
A. Bossche.
Computer aided fault tree synthesis
,
1985
.
[2]
Kai-Yuan Cai,et al.
System failure engineering and fuzzy methodology An introductory overview
,
1996,
Fuzzy Sets Syst..
[3]
Jin Wang,et al.
Maritime Risk Assessment and its Current Status
,
2006,
Qual. Reliab. Eng. Int..
[4]
Alan N. Beard,et al.
Nonlinear dynamics of flashover in compartment fires
,
1993
.
[5]
Dennis P. Nolan.
Handbook of Fire and Explosion Protection Engineering Principles: for Oil, Gas, Chemical and Related Facilities
,
1997
.
[6]
P. H. Gee.
Evolution of offshore legislation
,
2000
.
[7]
P. H. Thomas,et al.
Flashover and instabilities in fire behavior
,
1980
.
[8]
Andre Bossche.
Computer-aided fault tree synthesis I (system modeling and causal trees)
,
1991
.
[9]
L.W.D. Cullen,et al.
The public inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster
,
1993
.