Combustion of a solid fuel material at motion

Abstract

The present paper proposes a mathematical model for the ignition phenomenon of a non static combustible solid fuel bed under the exposure of a constant incoming heat flux impinging on the solid surface. The thermal behaviors in terms of temperature responses of the solids of thermally thin, thermally thick and thermally moderate (finite-depth) target materials are analytically evaluated. Having established asymptotic relations, analytical estimates for the ignition time and critical heat flux are derived together with further approximations for the full temperature distribution inside the solid material without necessitating any numerical treatment. The explicit findings clearly point that a solid fuel bed layer at motion possesses less ignition time with a lower critical heat flux as compared to a solid material at rest, which may constitute a practical significance in applications involving fire, forest fuel and waste burning ignition, since combustion is initiated rapidly for moving flammable targets.