Abstract
Fire spread occurs via radiation, flame contact, and firebrands. While firebrand showers are known to be a cause of spot fires which ignite fuels far from the main fire front, in the case of short distance spot fires, radiation from the main fire may play a role for firebrand induced ignition processes. Many past investigations have focused on singular effects on fire spread, and little is known about coupled effects. The coupled effect of radiative heat flux and firebrand showers on ignition processes of fuel beds is studied by using a newly developed experimental protocol. The newly developed protocol includes the addition of a radiant panel to the existing experimental setup of a firebrand generator coupled to a wind facility. Experiments were performed under an applied wind field, as the wind is a key parameter in large outdoor fire spread processes. Results show that radiant heat flux plays an important role for ignition by firebrands under 6 m/s while little effect was observed under 8 m/s.
Highlights
Large outdoor fires pose problems for societies across the world [1, 2]
The firebrand flux on the fuel beds differ under 6 m/s and 8 m/s (6.3/m2 s and 9.0/m2 s, respectively)
The time to smoldering ignition (SI) was measured via video recording, from the time the first firebrand landed the fuel bed to the time the sustained SI was observed in the fuel bed
Summary
Large outdoor fires pose problems for societies across the world [1, 2]. Perhaps the most often in the news are wildland fires that approach urban areas. These are more referred to as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires [3]. In Asia and North America, some recent examples are the 2019 WUI fires that occurred in South Korea and those in 2018 in Northern California in the United States [4,5,6]. In Africa, in less developed countries, there have been large fires that have occurred in informal settlements [7]. For centuries there have been large urban fires in Japan, a country with no large wildland fire problem or informal settlement situation [2]
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