A convective model for laboratory fires with well-ordered vertically-oriented fuel beds

Chatelon, François Joseph; Balbi, Jacques-Henri; Morvan, Dominique; Rossi, Jean-Louis; Marcelli, Thierry

doi:10.1016/j.firesaf.2017.04.022

Cited by 11 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 30 publications

(65 reference statements)

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“…Even if the gas flow turbulence in the vicinity of a fire front is variable, its effect on spread is deterministic and following Chatelon et al (2017), it can be represented by an equivalent average steady-state flow.…”

Section: Simplified Gas Flow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1) but, on the one hand, the temperature of this moving air is much closer to ambient than flame temperature and, on the other hand, it is too far from the fuel bed and is not continuously in contact with the vegetation stratum. According to Chatelon et al (2017), this air flow does not create a convective warming flow. The hot gas flow inside the flame base provides a great amount of energy to the unburnt fuel by contact.…”

Section: Energy Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The question about the role of convective heat transfer has been discussed by Pagni and Peterson (1973) and they found convection to be the primary heat transfer mechanism under some conditions. For specific fuel beds (for instance discontinuous fuel beds), Weber (1990), Finney et al (2006) and Chatelon et al (2017) suggested that convective heat transfer is necessary for fire spread and is related to flame dynamics, and some recent works (Morandini et al 2014(Morandini et al , 2018Grumstrup et al 2017;Sánchez-Monroy et al 2019) investigated the relevance of convective v. radiative flux. Moreover, the main well-known computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based physical models (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This model has to be simple, robust and faster than real time in order to be used at field scale under operational conditions. The model is built as a combination of a radiative-only model (Balbi et al 2009(Balbi et al , 2010) and a convective model (Chatelon et al 2017). The first section presents the main equations of the proposed model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A convective–radiative propagation model for wildland fires

Balbi

Chatelon

Morvan

et al. 2020

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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The ‘Balbi model’ is a simplified steady-state physical propagation model for surface fires that considers radiative heat transfer from the surface area of burning fuel particles as well as from the flame body. In this work, a completely new version of this propagation model for wildand fires is proposed. Even if, in the present work, this model is confined to laboratory experiments, its purpose is to be used at a larger scale in the field under operational conditions. This model was constructed from a radiative propagation model with the addition of a convective heat transfer term resulting from the impingement of packets of hot reacting gases on unburnt fuel elements located at the base of the flame. The flame inside the fuel bed is seen as the ‘fingers of fire’ described in the literature. The proposed model is physics-based, faster than real time and fully predictive, which means that model parameters do not change from one experiment to another. The predicted rate of spread is applied to a large set of laboratory experiments (through homogeneous pine needles and excelsior fuel beds) and is compared with the predictions of both a very simple empirical model (Catchpole) and a detailed physical model (FireStar2D).

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Section: Simplified Gas Flow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Energy Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A convective–radiative propagation model for wildland fires

Balbi

Chatelon

Morvan

et al. 2020

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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“…Physically based formulations of fire spread (e.g., [4]) are credited to be more generally valid across different fuel and weather conditions [5] than empirical ones. However, although they are usually very complex, no such model has been able to provide reliable predictions for a general free-spreading field fire so far.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Model for the Effect of Wind on Fire Spread Rate

Rossa

Fernandes

2018

Fire

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Predicting wind-driven rate of fire spread (RoS) has been the aim of many studies. Still, a field-tested model for general use, regardless of vegetation type, is currently lacking. We develop an empirical model for wind-aided RoS from laboratory fires (n = 216), assuming that it depends mainly on fire-released energy and on the extension of flame over the fuel bed in still air, and that it can be obtained by multiplying RoS in no-wind and no-slope conditions by a factor quantifying the wind effect. Testing against independent laboratory and field data (n = 461) shows good agreement between observations and predictions. Our results suggest that the fuel bed density effect detected by other work may be a surrogate for the amount of fuel involved in combustion, which depends on fuel load. Because RoS under windless conditions is unaffected by fuel load, the involved mechanisms differ from wind-aided propagation. Compared to shallow fuel beds, the wind effect is usually modest in deep vegetation, because tall fuel complexes are dominated by live fuels (high moisture content) and flames extend less above the vegetation when fuel moisture is high. The present work warrants further inspection in a broader range of field conditions.

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