Numerical prediction of fire spread over vegetation in aribitrary 3D terrain

Costa, Ana Novo; Pereiraal, J. C. F.

doi:10.1002/fam.810190605

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…The methods in region III include those developed by Costa et al (1995), Clark et al (1996Clark et al ( , 2003Clark et al ( , 2004, and Coen (2003), all of which obtain the heat and moisture release, fuel consumption, and fire spread rate from either a prescribed formula or semiempirical relations. For this reason, computational resources can be devoted to resolving atmospheric physics.…”

Section: Review Of Physics-based Wildland Fire Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A physics-based approach to modelling grassland fires

Mell

Jenkins

Gould

et al. 2007

Int. J. Wildland Fire

465

344

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Physics-based coupled fire-atmosphere models are based on approximations to the governing equations of fluid dynamics, combustion, and the thermal degradation of solid fuel. They require significantly more computational resources than the most commonly used fire spread models, which are semi-empirical or empirical. However, there are a number of fire behaviour problems, of increasing relevance, that are outside the scope of empirical and semi-empirical models. Examples are wildland-urban interface fires, assessing how well fuel treatments work to reduce the intensity of wildland fires, and investigating the mechanisms and conditions underlying blow-up fires and fire spread through heterogeneous fuels. These problems are not amenable to repeatable full-scale field studies. Suitably validated coupled atmosphere-fire models are one way to address these problems. This paper describes the development of a three-dimensional, fully transient, physics-based computer simulation approach for modelling fire spread through surface fuels. Grassland fires were simulated and compared to findings from Australian experiments. Predictions of the head fire spread rate for a range of ambient wind speeds and ignition line-fire lengths compared favourably to experiments. In addition, two specific experimental cases were simulated in order to evaluate how well the model predicts the development of the entire fire perimeter.

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Section: Review Of Physics-based Wildland Fire Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A physics-based approach to modelling grassland fires

Mell

Jenkins

Gould

et al. 2007

Int. J. Wildland Fire

465

344

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“…First, replace the forest with a porous medium of very high porosity as was first done by Costa et al [5], and somewhat later, and independently, by McDonough and Garzón [6] in only two space dimensions. Second, ignore all details of combustion chemistry, and simply focus on the main outcome of that chemistry, heat release.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parallel Performance of a New Model for Wildland Fire Spread Predictions

MCDONOUGH¹,

YANG²

1996

Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics 1995

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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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“…Our forest fire model is constructed on the basis of three main ideas. First, replace the forest with a porous medium of very high porosity as was first done by Costa et al [5], and somewhat later, and independently, by McDonough and Garzón [6] in only two space dimensions. Second, ignore all details of combustion chemistry, and simply focus on the main outcome of that chemistry, heat release.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%