A review of physics and correlations of pool fire behaviour in wind and future challenges

Abstract

This paper reviews the physics and correlations for the burning behaviour of pool fires in wind, discussing also challenges for future research on this topic. In the past decades, the burning behaviour of pool fires in still air, which is solely buoyancy driven, has been extensively studied. These studies are primarily focused on scale, radiation, soot, pressure and gravity effects. However, these phenomena and physics change significantly with much more complexity in the presence of wind, with regard to heat feedback and burning rate; flame morphological characteristics; flame turbulence, soot and radiation emission. Remarkable progress has been made in understanding the behaviour of the heat feedback and burning rate, flame tilt, flame length and flame base drag of wind-blown pool fires. Several semi-empirical correlations have been proposed for these quantities, based on experimental data and the physically dimensional analysis. However, for wind-blown pool fires, the flame soot and radiation emission coupling with complex flow turbulence scales due to the interaction of buoyancy with wind still require more basic research. All these processes are more challenging especially for wind-blown large scale pool fires, which require knowledge and understanding of the physics, especially for establishing evaluation methodologies of their hazard and adverse impact.