Investigating Coupled Effect of Radiative Heat Flux and Firebrand Showers on Ignition of Fuel Beds

Suzuki, Sayaka; Manzello, Samuel L.

doi:10.1007/s10694-020-01018-5

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Direct flame contact and firebrands may also act in combination while direct flame contact is likely dominant. Thermal radiation and firebrands may also act in combination as studied in (Suzuki and Manzello, 2021a).…”

Section: Frontiers In Mechanical Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The world is burning: What exactly are firebrands and why should anyone care?

Manzello¹,

Suzuki²

2023

Front. Mech. Eng.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Large outdoor fires have become commonplace all over the world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines large outdoor fires as an urban fire, tsunami-generated fire, volcano-generated fire, wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire, wildland fire, or informal settlement fire, where the total burnout area is significant. Perhaps of all the large outdoor fires, it is wildland fires that spread into urban areas, simply called WUI fires that attract the most attention. A glance at the recent headlines in the summer of 2022 reveals numerous catastrophic WUI fires all over Europe. Across the Atlantic Ocean in the USA, there is yet another destructive WUI fire raging in the USA state of California. With the increasing risks from a changing climate, these large outdoor fire disasters are only going to become more and more commonplace all over the world. More homes will be lost and more lives will be lost. It is the authors opinion that a targeted, multi-disciplinary approach is needed to address the large outdoor fire problem. In this short, invited paper to Horizons in Mechanical Engineering, it is argued that large outdoor fire problem is a fascinating and challenging research area and that engineers have the necessary skills and training to impact a problem that influences millions upon millions of people all over the world. An important danger, present in all large outdoor fires, are firebrands. Firebrands are introduced for non-specialist readers, and the most recent literature is reviewed. Several challenges are discussed, in particular, areas where engineers may help move the needle forward on this globally important topic.

show abstract

Section: Frontiers In Mechanical Engineeringmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This could become prominent in the case of short-range firebrand spotting. A new experimental setting was developed to investigate the combined effect of firebrand showers and radiant heat (Suzuki and Manzello, 2021a). Experiments were performed under 6 m/s and 8 m/s, with different pre-heating by radiative heat source.…”

Section: Firebrand Ignition Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The world is burning: What exactly are firebrands and why should anyone care?

Manzello¹,

Suzuki²

2023

Front. Mech. Eng.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In most tests and numerical simulations of WUI fires, these elements, located between the native forest and the building, are generally not represented. However, if represented they burn under very low wind conditions (Suzuki and Manzello, 2020;Li et al, 2021;Di Cristina et al, 2021), though in real fires (particularly true in South-East of France), fires in these ornamental elements occur under very gusty and chaotic wind conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At parcel scale, the fire pathways often involve ornamental vegetation, that highly raises the damaging potential of the wildfire, this vegetation being at short distance to the structures and having a comparable size with buildings. Horizontal and vertical discontinuities in this vegetation do largely impact the exposure (Cohen, 2008) and installing such discontinuities is becoming part of the protection regulation against wildfires in different countries .While the impact of embers has been extensively studied in the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) facilities (Manzello and Suzuki, 2014;Suzuki and Manzello, 2020), the effect of the fuel discontinuities on the reduction of thermal attack when approaching the building has been poorly addressed. This study aims at simulating in laboratory conditions a moving fire front pushed by wind and propagating from the surface to a canopy of ornamental vegetation, with fuel discontinuities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the impact of embers has been extensively studied in the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) facilities (Manzello and Suzuki, 2014;Suzuki and Manzello, 2020), the effect of the fuel discontinuities on the reduction of thermal attack when approaching the building has been poorly addressed. This study aims at simulating in laboratory conditions a moving fire front pushed by wind and propagating from the surface to a canopy of ornamental vegetation, with fuel discontinuities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fire propagation from surface to canopy on ornamental species under wind in laboratory conditions

Streit¹,

Guillaume²,

Girardin³

et al. 2022

Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fires in wildland-urban interfaces (WUIs) are resulting from intertwined physical processes at different scales: landscape, settlement, parcel, building and material(Vacca et al., 2020) and are causing growing damage worldwide in context of climate change and large urban sprawl. The significant damage caused by these fires requires effective reinforcement of the resistance of structures and parcels against exposure to fire. Recent methodologies (Vacca et al., 2020; Benichou et al., 2021; Maranghides et al., 2022) have emphasised the need to look at these objectives by considering the spatial relationships between fuels, exposures and building resistance, in the perspective of a fire propagating in WUI according to so-called â€œfire pathwaysâ€. At parcel scale the fire pathways often involve ornamental vegetation, that highly raises the damaging potential of the wildfire, this vegetation being at short distance to the structures and having size comparable to building size. Horizontal and vertical discontinuities in this vegetation do largely impact the exposure (Cohen, 2008) and installing such discontinuities is becoming part of the protection regulation against wildfires in different countries (Maranghides et al., 2022). While the impact of embers has been extensively studied in the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) facilities (Manzello and Suzuki, 2014; Suzuki and Manzello, 2020), the effect of the fuel discontinuities on the reduction of thermal attack when approaching the building has been poorly addressed. This study aims at simulating in laboratory conditions a moving fire front pushed by wind and propagating from the surface to a canopy of ornamental vegetation, with fuel discontinuities. The experimental setup is composed of a fire lit in a surface excelsior fuelbed, propagating to a nearby vertical ornamental structure (excelsior and cypress) exposed to controlled high wind exposure (up to 10 m/s). The work is completed by a comparison of numerical modelling between the WFDS and FDS models. The first steps of this study are shown here, namely on zero-wind surface fire propagation, showing a coherent sensitivity of the rate of spread to fuelbed width and fuelbed load, and showing the ability of WFDS and FDS to reasonably reproduce this rate of spread. The ability of FDS to propagate to an isolated vertical tree with the same modelling processes is also well established.

show abstract