PDR Alliance

PDR Alliance is a joint initiative from a wide range of stakeholders that share a common interest in assessing and enhancing the predictive capabilities of consequence models for explosions in complex geometries.

There is no direct cost associated with the involvement in PDR Alliance, and participants control their own contributions and level of involvement.

New participants can join by completing a short survey (below).

The primary objective of PDR Alliance is to improve the predictive capabilities of porosity/distributed resistance (PDR) solvers for representing the consequences of explosions in complex geometries. Secondary objectives include:

• Creating an open forum for stakeholders engaged in explosion science, safety engineering, and risk assessment.
• Facilitating academic research on open-source PDR solvers in conjunction with pre-competitive R&D for commercial PDR solvers.
• Involving a broad range of stakeholders in the development, verification, validation, and documentation of PDR solvers.
• Facilitating cooperation on research projects that entail PDR modelling in conjunction with experiments and detailed modelling (DNS, LES).
• Increasing the relevance of master and doctoral education for the labour market.
• Improving the strength of knowledge (SoK) in risk assessments for systems where accidental explosions represent a hazard.

Accidental explosions cause severe losses in industry and society, and safe and cost-effective design of facilities requires models that can estimate the consequences of such events with sufficient accuracy, within reasonable time.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is increasingly used in quantitative risk assessments (QRAs) for systems that entail large-scale complex geometries. Since simulations of explosion phenomena in such systems will remain under-resolved for the foreseeable future, the de facto industry standard entails the use of models based on the porosity/distributed resistance (PDR) formulation. This includes commercial tools such as FLACS-CFD and KFX-EXSIM, and open-source solvers such as PDRFoam and STOKES.

The main challenge in PDR modelling is developing sub-grid models that accurately represent key physical and chemical processes on a coarse computational mesh. These models can be designed and validated using theory, experiments, and numerical simulations.

Depending on the research interests and ambitions of the organisations and individuals involved, the activities of the PDR Alliance may include:

• Organising meetings and workshops for relevant stakeholders, including dedicated sessions or side-events during international conferences, seminars, or workshops.
• Using results from highly resolved numerical simulations (DNS/LES) in conjunction with results from experiments at various spatial scales to formulate, implement, validate, and document improved sub-grid models for PDR solvers.
• Facilitating and coordinating the development and documentation of open-source PDR solvers and associated utility programs in shared repositories.
• Developing a model evaluation protocol (MEP) suitable for PDR models, including recommendations for experimental test cases.
• Coordinating proposals for research projects that include PDR modelling in conjunction with experiments and other modelling approaches.

Please complete the SURVEY [https://svar.uib.no/LinkCollector?key=X339JV6QLK96 (external link)] if you want to get involved or stay informed about the activities:

KICK-OFF MEETING

Registered participants will receive a link to a Doodle poll where they can indicate preferences and availability for an online kick-off meeting on Teams. This event is tentatively scheduled for the second half of January 2026.