Experimental studies on the fire behaviour and smoke toxicity of German pine vegetation (Pinus sylvestris)

Abstract

The mechanisms of fire and smoke spread in forest and vegetation fires have not been fully investigated. Most numerical models often only consider the topography of the area and climatic influences such as wind and temperature. There is a need to understand the fire behaviour of specific vegetation in order to predict how the fire and smoke will spread during a fire incident. Understanding the mechanisms and behaviour of fire is therefore important for both, preventing and fighting fires. The European research project TREEADS and the associated German pilot project 'Fire research in forest fires and derivation of safety measures' deal with these problems. Therefore, several measurement campaigns were carried out to study safety-relevant parameters, fire behaviour, fire spread and spontaneous combustion processes of specific German vegetation and soil samples. The research objectives of the studies focused on the characterisation of fire development and spread as well as smoke composition. * At the time of acceptance and publishing of this work the project name was DRYADS but it has since been changed to TREEADS for legal reasons.