Scaling fire whirls

Abstract

A fire whirl in an open space can cause devastating damage as was experienced in Hifukusho-ato, Tokyo, after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1921. To understand the generation mechanism of the open-space fire whirls, 1/1000th scale-model experiments were conducted in a large, low-speed open-loop wind tunnel. In analyzing the experiments, there was found to be a critical lateral wind velocity that generated intense fire whirls. A scaling law that predicts the critical wind velocity was developed and validated by various data including scale-model experiments by other researchers and real urban fire whirls. A dimensional analysis is conducted to understand the effect of flow circulation on the increase in flame height. The simple analysis was supported by the results of numerical simulations by other researchers.