Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Aerosol can explosions

Currently working on a court report relating to the size and duration of a fireball resulting from an exploding aerosol can. The can was in a bin in a changing room so was probably 'empty' or nearly empty. There would still have been some residual flammable product in the can. Most of the literature relates to larger LPG releases and work with full aerosols.

I'm interested in colleague's thoughts, so please get in touch

I will share what I can after the trial.

Mike
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5 comments:

  1. The Gray Monk26 October 2010 at 18:54

    Having asked my resident expert, the duration would be short, dependent on the content level as it would be a BLEVE situation and the duration of the fireball would be directly related to how much fuel was ejected, flame propagation and velocity in the ejecta. In any scenario this duration would be relatively short.

    I have several times placed aerosols in fire scenes set for students and the BLEVE is, from observation, short, violent and spreads the fire right through the scene when the aerosol is full.

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  2. David Townsend26 October 2010 at 22:03

    Mike.
    Sounds like it may be of value to the court to video some tests that may reasonably re-enact the scene and hypothesis. Provided of course that the same product or range of products can be identified.

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  3. The Gray Monk27 October 2010 at 11:01

    Good idea, but from experience it is incredibly difficult to catch the event on a video! Health and Safety dictate it's not really that safe to be where you can focus a camera on it. I do have a photograph of a 500 gram Propane canister bursting if that helps.

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  4. Chris Clarke2 November 2010 at 07:55

    Mike, I have some video of a reconstruction of a can in a bathroom situation. It was filmed from 2 angles and is very dramatic. It was done some years ago and I am not sure if we could lay our hands on the detail of its content, size etc. However I am happy to share. Chris

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  5. Mike Burroughs22 January 2011 at 14:18

    Dave, Pat, Chris

    Thanks for your comments. I spoke to the police and prosecutors about tests but they declined. I'm inclined to agree with Pat it seems to be a choice between self and an expensive camera being too close to the bang!!

    Chris, I will take you up on your offer of the video, hopefully we can chat at IAAI AGM next week.

    Sorry I've been absent from here for so long, we're all busy but the last few months have been busier than usual and show no signs of letting up in the near future!!

    Cheers Mike

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