A new approach to simulation of wildland fire spread is outlined, and preliminary results of computations and parallelization of the algorithms are presented and discussed. The fire spread model is based on a porous medium representation of the forest with heat source terms replacing treatment of detailed chemistry. The formulation is implemented in conjunction with a synthetic-velocity form of large-eddy simulation (LES) which is capable of producing far more detailed results than can be obtained with usual forms of LES, but yet is very efficient and easily parallelized.Key words: Large-eddy simulation, Parallelization, Forest fire spread BackgroundWildland fires result in billions of dollars (USD) in financial losses annually on a global basis. In the US alone, more than a billion USD are spent per year simply on containment and extinguishment aspects of wildland fires. The amount of financial loss can be expected to rise in the coming years in developed regions of the world due to rapidly increasing extent of the wildland/urban interface, leading to far higher property losses in the form of homes and businesses in the path of wildland fires, and at the same time increased potential for loss of human and domestic animal life as seen in the fires in Southern California during the Autumn 2003 fire season. At the same time, both the length of the yearly fire seasons and the extent of geographic territory subject to fires is expected to increase in response to global warming. Beyond this is the fact that setting forest fires is one of the most easily accomplished acts of terrorism, and the social upheaval caused by widespread forest fires, if nothing else, provides an effective diversion allowing even more sinister activities to go undetected.
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