Parallel Fire Research Articles

Numerical simulation of two parallel merging wildfires

Background Wildfire often shows complex dynamic behaviour due to the inherent nature of ambient conditions, vegetation and ignition patterns. Merging fire is one such dynamic behaviour that plays a critical role in the safety of structures and firefighters. Aim & method The aim of this study was to develop better insight and understanding of the interaction of parallel merging firelines, using a numerical validation of a physics-based CFD wildfire model concerning merging fires. Conclusions The validated model shows a relative error of 5–35% in estimating the rate of fire spread compared with the experimental observation in most of the cases. A physical interpretation is presented to show how parallel fire behaves and interacts with the ambient conditions, providing complementary information to the experimental study. Implications The validated numerical model serves as a base case for further study in developing a better correlation for the rate of fire spread between parallel firelines with different ambient conditions, especially at the field scale.

Interaction between two parallel fire fronts under different wind conditions

Wildfires often exhibit complex and dynamic behaviour arising from interactions between the fire and surrounding environment that can create a rapid fire advance and result in loss of containment and critical fire safety concerns. A series of laboratory experiments involving the interaction of two parallel fire lines on a uniform fuel bed without slope under the influence of wind is presented and discussed. The two fire lines are initially separated by a certain distance (1, 2 m) and the subsequent fire spread is described. The results show that the pyroconvective interaction between the two fire lines and ambient wind modified the rate of spread of the approaching fire lines and their associated spread characteristics, independently of the distance between them. A physical interpretation of fire evolution based on the dynamic interaction between two parallel fire lines under wind flow is proposed. We use a dimensionless physical parameter, the Froude number. The results also demonstrated the existence of a wind flow velocity between 1 and 2 m s−1, corresponding to a Froude number between 0.2 and 0.4 for which the rate of approach of the two merging fire lines is a minimum.

Quantifying merging fire behaviour phenomena using unmanned aerial vehicle technology

Catastrophic wildfires are often a result of dynamic fire behaviours. They can cause rapid escalation of fire behaviour, increasing the danger to ground-based emergency personnel. To date, few studies have characterised merging fire behaviours outside the laboratory. The aim of this study was to develop a simple, fast and accurate method to track fire front propagation using emerging technologies to quantify merging fire behaviour at the field scale. Medium-scale field experiments were conducted during April 2019 on harvested wheat fields in western Victoria, Australia. An unmanned aerial vehicle was used to capture high-definition video imagery of fire propagation. Twenty-one junction and five inward parallel fire fronts were identified during the experiments. The rate of spread (ROS) of junction fire fronts was found to be at least 60% higher than head fire fronts. Thirty-eight per cent of junction fire fronts had increased ROS at the final stage of the merging process. Furthermore, the angle between two junction fire fronts did not change significantly in time for initial angles of 4–14°. All these results contrast with previous published work. Further investigation is required to explain the results as the relationship between fuel load, wind speed and scale is not known.

Wave-polarization Analysis of the Alfvénic Slow Solar Wind at Kinetic Scales

Abstract This paper reports the first polarization measurement in the Alfvénic slow solar wind. The normalized magnetic helicity is used as a diagnostic parameter for studying the polarization status of the high-frequency magnetic fluctuations, along with an attempt to identify various wave modes in the solar wind turbulence. Clear evidence for the existence of ion cyclotron waves (ICWs) and kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) is also found in the Alfvénic low-speed plasma, robustly supporting the idea that the Alfvénic content of the solar wind fluctuations at fluid scales is the key parameter driving wave generation at kinetic scales. By separating the contributions to helicity from the two modes, it is possible to address the thermodynamical properties of ICWs and KAWs and provide the first direct estimate of their magnetic compressibility. In particular, while ICWs are mainly associated with higher levels of anisotropy and appear to be bounded by the threshold of proton–cyclotron kinetic instability, KAWs (which end up being more compressive than ICWs) are found at lower anisotropies and seem to be limited by the mirror mode instability threshold, extending as well to near the parallel fire hose unstable region. These result are relevant to theories of turbulence and dissipation in the solar wind.

Experimental Study of Thermal Behavior of Insulation Material Rigid Polyurethane in Parallel, Symmetric, and Adjacent Building Façade Constructions.

Both experimental and theoretical methods were proposed to assess the effects of adjacent, parallel, and symmetric exterior wall structures on the combustion and flame spreading characteristics of rigid polyurethane (PUR) foam insulation. During the combustion of PUR specimens, the flame leading edge was found to transfer from a unique inverted ‘W’ shape to an inverted ‘V’ during flame propagation. This phenomenon is attributed to edge effects related to boundary layer theory. The effects of the adjacent façade angle on flame spreading rate and flame height were shown to be nonlinear, as a result of the combined influences of heat transfer, radiation angle, and the chimney restriction effects. A critical angle around 90 degree with maximum thermal hazards outwards by parallel fire was observed and consistent with the mass loss rate and flame height tendencies. For narrow spacing configurations or angles (e.g., 60 and 90 degrees), phenomenological two-pass processing in conjunction showed that increased preheating lengths were associated with enhanced heat transfer. The results of this study have implications concerning the design of safe façade structures for high-rise buildings, and provide a better understanding of downward flame spreading over PUR.

Proton fire hose instabilities in the expanding solar wind

Using two-dimensional hybrid expanding box simulations we study the competition between the continuously driven parallel proton temperature anisotropy and fire hose instabilities in collisionless homogeneous plasmas. For a quasi-radial ambient magnetic field the expansion drives $T_{p\Vert }>T_{p\bot }$ and the system becomes eventually unstable with respect to the dominant parallel fire hose instability. This instability is generally unable to counteract the induced anisotropization and the system typically becomes unstable with respect to the oblique fire hose instability later on. The oblique instability efficiently reduces the anisotropy and the system rapidly stabilizes, while a significant part of the generated electromagnetic fluctuations is damped to protons. As long as the magnetic field is in the quasi-radial direction, this evolution repeats itself and the electromagnetic fluctuations accumulate. For a sufficiently oblique magnetic field the expansion drives $T_{p\bot }>T_{p\Vert }$ and brings the system to the stable region with respect to the fire hose instabilities.

LEOPARD: A grid‐based dispersion relation solver for arbitrary gyrotropic distributions

AbstractParticle velocity distributions measured in collisionless space plasmas often show strong deviations from idealized model distributions. Despite this observational evidence, linear wave analysis in space plasma environments such as the solar wind or Earth's magnetosphere is still mainly carried out using dispersion relation solvers based on Maxwellians or other parametric models. To enable a more realistic analysis, we present the new grid‐based kinetic dispersion relation solver LEOPARD (Linear Electromagnetic Oscillations in Plasmas with Arbitrary Rotationally‐symmetric Distributions) which no longer requires prescribed model distributions but allows for arbitrary gyrotropic distribution functions. In this work, we discuss the underlying numerical scheme of the code and we show a few exemplary benchmarks. Furthermore, we demonstrate a first application of LEOPARD to ion distribution data obtained from hybrid simulations. In particular, we show that in the saturation stage of the parallel fire hose instability, the deformation of the initial bi‐Maxwellian distribution invalidates the use of standard dispersion relation solvers. A linear solver based on bi‐Maxwellians predicts further growth even after saturation, while LEOPARD correctly indicates vanishing growth rates. We also discuss how this complies with former studies on the validity of quasilinear theory for the resonant fire hose. In the end, we briefly comment on the role of LEOPARD in directly analyzing spacecraft data, and we refer to an upcoming paper which demonstrates a first application of that kind.

FIRE HOSE INSTABILITY DRIVEN BY ALPHA PARTICLE TEMPERATURE ANISOTROPY

We investigate properties of a solar wind-like plasma including a secondary alpha particle population exhibiting a parallel temperature anisotropy with respect to the background magnetic field, using linear and quasi-linear predictions and by means of one-dimensional hybrid simulations. We show that anisotropic alpha particles can drive a parallel fire hose instability analogous to that generated by protons, but that, remarkably, the instability can be triggered also when the parallel plasma beta of alpha particles is below unity. The wave activity generated by the alpha anisotropy affects the evolution of the more abundant protons, leading to their anisotropic heating. When both ion species have sufficient parallel anisotropies both of them can drive the instability, and we observe generation of two distinct peaks in the spectra of the fluctuations, with longer wavelengths associated to alphas and shorter ones to protons. If a non-zero relative drift is present, the unstable modes propagate preferentially in the direction of the drift associated with the unstable species. The generated waves scatter particles and reduce their temperature anisotropy to marginally stable state, and, moreover, they significantly reduce the relative drift between the two ion populations. The coexistence of modes excited by both species leads to saturation of the plasma in distinct regions of the beta/anisotropy parameter space for protons and alpha particles, in good agreement with in situ solar wind observations. Our results confirm that fire hose instabilities are likely at work in the solar wind and limit the anisotropy of different ion species in the plasma.

화재에 노출된 교량하부 강합성 구조물에 대한 열-구조 연성 병렬화재해석

The objective of this research is to evaluate of global and local damage for steel-concrete composite structures under highway bridge exposed to fire loading. To enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the numerical analysis, the proposed transient nonlinear thermal structure interaction(TSI) parallel fire analysis method is implemented in ANSYS. To validate the TSI parallel fire analysis method, a comparison is made with the standard fire test results. The proposed TSI parallel fire analysis method is applied to fire damage analysis and performance evaluation for Buchen highway bridge. The result of analysis, temperature of low flange and web are exceed the critical temperature. The deflection and deformation state show good agreement with the fire accident of buchen highway bridge.

Parallel proton fire hose instability in gyrotropic Hall MHD model

The linear theory and nonlinear evolution of parallel or classical fire hose instability previously studied based on hybrid particle simulations are examined within the framework of a gyrotropic Hall magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model that incorporates the ion inertial effects arising from the Hall current but neglects the electron inertia in the generalized Ohm's law. Both the ion cyclotron and whistler waves become fire hose unstable for β∥ − > 2 + λi2k2/2 with right‐handed circular polarization, where λi and k are the ion inertial length and wave number, respectively, implying that the ion inertia plays a stabilizing role in parallel fire hose instability. Substantial noncoplanar components of the magnetic field and flow velocity may develop as a result of Hall current. The evolution characteristics of magnetic field fluctuations may depend on the Hall parameter h = λi/λr, where λr is the resistive length. For moderately and highly dispersive cases the instability may be purely growing in the early stage with the development of soliton‐like structures with depressed magnetic field on the order of a few ion inertial lengths and become propagating with right‐handed circular polarization in the late phase when the waves have inversely cascaded to large‐amplitude Alfvén waves of longer wavelengths. Oscillatory and damping behavior resembling those found in the kinetic model may be reproduced for single‐mode perturbations of long wavelengths with h ≤ 1. The saturated magnetic field is found to comply with the quasi‐linear theory.

Oblique proton fire hose instability in the expanding solar wind: Hybrid simulations

Oblique fire hose instability is investigated using hybrid simulations for proton betas of the order of one and for proton parallel temperatures sufficiently greater than the perpendicular ones. The simulations confirm previous simulation results showing that this instability has self‐destructing properties and efficiently reduces the proton temperature anisotropy. A parametric study using one‐dimensional standard hybrid simulations shows that stronger changes in the temperature anisotropy and stronger wave emissions appear for larger initial temperature anisotropies. An ideal, slow plasma expansion, modeled by a two‐dimensional hybrid expanding box simulation, leads to a generation of proton temperature anisotropy. The anisotropy leads first to destabilization of the dominant parallel fire hose, which interacts mainly with minor supra‐Alfvénic protons, whereas the evolution of core protons is determined by expansion. Consequently, the effective anisotropy is only slightly reduced and the system eventually becomes unstable with respect to the oblique fire hose instability. The oblique fire hose strongly scatters the protons and removes the anisotropy disrupting the parallel fire hose. An important portion of the fluctuating wave energy is dissipated to protons, and only long wavelength waves remain in the system. The system with low wave activity then develops again larger temperature anisotropies, and the evolution repeats itself. It is concluded that both parallel and oblique proton fire hose instabilities constrain the proton temperature anisotropy in the expanding solar wind, with the latter one constituting a final frontier for the anisotropy. These results give a possible explanation of some apparent discrepancies between observations and linear predictions. In addition, a simple bounded anisotropy model is developed to include some of the kinetic effects of the fire hose instabilities in fluid models.

Solar wind proton temperature anisotropy: Linear theory and WIND/SWE observations

We present a comparison between WIND/SWE observations (Kasper et al., 2006) of β∥p and T⊥p/T∥p (where β∥p is the proton parallel beta and T⊥p and T∥p are the perpendicular and parallel proton temperatures, respectively; here parallel and perpendicular indicate directions with respect to the ambient magnetic field) and predictions of the Vlasov linear theory. In the slow solar wind, the observed proton temperature anisotropy seems to be constrained by oblique instabilities, by the mirror one and the oblique fire hose, contrary to the results of the linear theory which predicts a dominance of the proton cyclotron instability and the parallel fire hose. The fast solar wind core protons exhibit an anticorrelation between β∥c and T⊥c/T∥c (where β∥c is the core proton parallel beta and T⊥c and T∥c are the perpendicular and parallel core proton temperatures, respectively) similar to that observed in the HELIOS data (Marsch et al., 2004).

Parallel and oblique proton fire hose instabilities in the presence of alpha/proton drift: Hybrid simulations

Parallel and oblique proton fire hose instabilities are investigated in the presence of a small abundance of alpha particles with a nonzero drift velocity with respect to protons. Both instabilities scatter protons and alpha particles in the perpendicular direction with respect to the ambient magnetic field and decelerate both species with respect each other; especially the oblique fire hose effectively diffuses ions owing to its non‐quasi‐linear evolution. Linear Vlasov theory predicts that the presence of the alpha/proton drift enhances the maximum growth rates of the two instabilities in a similar way and that the parallel fire hose is typically the dominant instability. On the other hand, the oblique fire hose has often the maximum growth rate comparable to that of the parallel one and hybrid simulations show that the oblique instability may be active even when the parallel one is marginally stable. Consequently, both instabilities are relevant in the solar wind context.