The Quantitative Assessment of Domino Effects Based on Stochastic Petri Nets

Abstract

The quantitative analysis of “domino” effects is one of the main aspects of hazard assessment in chemical industrial park. This paper demonstrates the application of heterogeneous stochastic Petri net modeling techniques to the quantitative assessment of the probabilities of domino effects of major accidents in chemical industrial park. First, five events are included in the domino effect models of major accidents: pool fire, explosion, boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion (BLEVE) giving rise to a fragment, jet fire and delayed explosion of a vapour cloud. Then, the domino effect models are converted into Generalized Stochastic Petri net (GSPN) in which the probability of the domino effect is calculated automatically. The Stochastic Petri nets’ models, which are state-space based ones, increase the modeling flexibility but create the state-space explosion problems. Finally, in order to alleviate the state-space explosion problems of GSPN models, this paper employs Stochastic Wellformed Net (SWN), a particular class of High-Level (colored) SPN. To conduct a case study on a chemical industrial park, the probability of domino effects of major accidents is calculated by using the GSPN model and SWN model in this paper.