Although the modelling of the spreading of a forest fire has made considerable progress recently, there remains a lack of reliable field measurements of thermodynamic quantities. We propose in this paper a method and a set of measuring structures built in order to improve the knowledge on the fundamental physical mechanisms that control the propagation of wildland fires. These experimental apparatus are designed to determine: the fire front shape, its rate of spread, the amount of energy impinging ahead of it, the vertical distribution of the temperature within the fire plume as well as the wind velocity and direction. The methodology proposed was applied to a fire spreading across the Corsican scrub on a test site.The recorded data allowed us to reconstruct the fire behaviour and provide its main properties. Wind and vegetation effects on fire behaviour were particularly addressed.
a b s t r a c tThe kinetics of thermal decomposition of a forest fuel was studied by thermogravimetry. Experiments were monitored under air and non-isothermal conditions from 400 to 900 K. We used a classical modelfree method, the Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) method to calculate the activation energy vs. the conversion degree of the reaction on the whole temperature domain. Analyses were performed at 10, 20 and 30 K/min. As expected, the complex structure of lignocellulosic fuels involved several steps with different energies in the degradation processes. The algorithm developed here, allows the calculation and the simulation of the solid temperature at different conversion degree for various heating rates. The good correlation between experiments and simulations validated the proposed algorithm. Then, kinetics parameters were used to perform simulations up to heating rates outside the functioning range of the thermal analyser.
The scope of this work was to show the utility of thermal analysis and calorimetric experiments to study the thermal oxidative degradation of Mediterranean scrubs. We investigated the thermal degradation of four species; DSC and TGA were used under air sweeping to record oxidative reactions in dynamic conditions. Heat released and mass loss are important data to be measured for wildland fires modelling purpose and fire hazard studies on ligno-cellulosic fuels. Around 638 K and 778 K, two dominating and overlapped exothermic peaks were recorded in DSC and individualized using a experimental and numerical separation. This stage allowed obtaining the enthalpy variation of each exothermic phenomenon. As an application, we propose to classify the fuels according to the heat released and the rate constant of each reaction. TGA experiments showed under air two successive mass loss around 638 K and 778 K. Both techniques are useful in order to measure ignitability, combustibility and sustainability of forest fuels.
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