MEC&F Expert Engineers : 8,500 GALLONS OF GASOLINE UP IN SMOKE IN CALIFORNIA: TANKER TRUCK FLIPS TO ITS SIDE AND CATCHES FIRE, CLOSES PORTION OF 710 FREEWAY IN BELL

Sunday, April 26, 2015

8,500 GALLONS OF GASOLINE UP IN SMOKE IN CALIFORNIA: TANKER TRUCK FLIPS TO ITS SIDE AND CATCHES FIRE, CLOSES PORTION OF 710 FREEWAY IN BELL













APRIL 26, 2015

BELL, CALIFORNIA

A tanker truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline caught fire, causing a closure of the north and southbound 710 Freeway in Bell on Sunday afternoon, officials said.

The fire was reported on the 710 Freeway near Florence Avenue, Los Angeles County Fire Department officials said around 3:45 p.m.

The truck was carrying about 8,500 gallons of gasoline, the department tweeted. Flames were extinguished by 4:54 p.m. but the roadway remained closed.

BandiniFire Update: IC Reports fire is contained. Tanker was carrying 8500 gal of gasoline. No injuries reported. pic.twitter.com/sgYlCkNYte
— LACounty Fire PIO (@LACoFDPIO) April 26, 2015

No injuries were reported, and more than 50 firefighters were deployed to battle the blaze, supervising dispatcher Cheryl Sims with the fire department told the Los Angeles Times.

Motorists were trapped on the freeway for nearly an hour, but around 4:30 p.m. southbound traffic was diverted onto Bandini Boulevard and northbound drivers were led off Florence Avenue, the CHP tweeted.

The north and southbound sides of the freeway would remain closed for an unknown amount of time, the California Highway Patrol tweeted.

Photos showed the tanker truck had overturned, and no other vehicles appeared to be involved in the crash.

Plumes of dark smoke billowed into the air as dozens of parked vehicles appeared to be stuck on the roadway, images on social media showed.

KTLA viewers reported seeing the smoke from as far away as Silver Lake.
Source: ktla.com





THE ROLLOVER RISK OF TRUCKS: EVASIVE OR SUDDEN MOVES WILL RESULT IN ROLLOVER OF THE TRUCK

THE ROLLOVER RISKS OF TWO-TANK TANKERS ARE TOO GREAT TO CONTINUE TO ALLOW THEM CARRYING HAZARDOUS MATERIALS WITHOUT ADDITIONAL SAFETY MEASURES



The recent rollover of a two-car tanker in Los Angeles reminds how dangerous these two-tank tankers are for carrying flammable liquids.

The fluid slosh can definitely throw you around if you're not expecting it. You have to be smooth with your inputs.  If the driver was being stupid/distracted/whatever he could have easily steered/braked too quickly and caused the slosh to tip him over.

Tankers are actually the hardest commercial vehicle to control.  Any tanker that has to be completely cleaned out between loads cannot have baffles. Imagine the kind of things that would grow in a tanker full of milk if you could never wash it out. There are also still older tankers out there that move things such as fuel that have baffles today, but did not always have them in the past.
No question its the driver's fault, but he really could have had some surging that contributed to the incident.

Dynamic Stability of a Vehicle Carrying Bulk Liquid and Driving Over a Bump

The forces generated by the sloshing of bulk liquid carried in tanker trucks can cause accidents.  The roll-over tendency of a vehicle can be measured in terms of how many "g" (gravitational acceleration) that vehicle can withstand in cornering.  The higher this value, the safer the vehicle.  For example, full size passenger cars can withstand around 1.2 g.  For a loaded semi-truck the number is 0.4, and for half empty tanker truck it can be as bad as 0.15.  Tanker trucks are used for supplying soldiers with water and fuel.  The trucks sometimes need to operate on rough terrain at relatively high speeds.  This exposes the truck to a roll-over risk. If the tanker is partially empty, the risk of roll-over becomes much higher. 

In this project, we simulate sloshing in a tanker truck driving over a bump. The truck is moving at 10 m/s and drives over a bump 40 cm high. The suspension system of the truck absorbs the initial displacement due to the bump and transfers the generated forces to the structure of the truck. The suspension system is composed of two linear springs with different spring constants. The 3D rigid-body dynamic equations are coupled to the finite element formulation of the flow problem and solved simultaneously for the motion of the tanker truck as function of time. The fluid dynamics equations are written in a non-inertial frame to account for this motion. The finite element mesh used consists of 343,560 hexahedral elements and 357,911 nodes. At each time-step, a coupled system of nonlinear equations with 1,704,661 unknowns is solved. The computation was carried out on a CRAY T3E with 32 processors. The frames below show, at different instants, the motion of the truck, sloshing, and fluid pressure. For additional information on sloshing in tanker trucks, see "Sloshing in a Container Subjected to Sudden Deceleration".
The mesh generator and flow solver were developed by the T*AFSM. 


References:

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4. T.E. Tezduyar, "Stabilized Finite Element Formulations for Incompressible Flow Computations", Advances in Applied Mechanics, 28 (1991) 1-44.
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6. T. Tezduyar, "Advanced Flow Simulation and Modeling", Flow Simulation with the Finite Element Method (in Japanese), Springer-Verlag, Tokyo, Japan (1998).
7. T. Tezduyar, S. Aliabadi and M. Behr, "Parallel Finite Element Computing Methods for Unsteady Flows with Interfaces", Computational Fluid Dynamics Review 1998 (eds. M. Hafez and K. Oshima), World Scientific (1998) 643-667.
8. T. Tezduyar, "CFD Methods for Three-Dimensional Computation of Complex Flow Problems", Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 81 (1999) 97-116.
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