@article{ref1,
title="The wind effect on the transport and burning of firebrands",
journal="Fire technology",
year="2017",
author="Song, Jiayun and Huang, Xinyan and Liu, Naian and Li, Han and Zhang, Linhe",
volume="53",
number="4",
pages="1555-1568",
abstract="Firebrands, controlling spot fires, are often responsible for fast damages in wildland and urban fires. However, the behaviours of firebrands are difficult to predict. In this study, we conduct experiments in a wind tunnel to investigate the effect of wind on the smouldering burning and transport of firebrands. Three different sizes of disc wood particles (weighing about 1 g) are heated to generate smouldering firebrands, and then blown out by a horizontal wind of 5 or 7 m/s. In each experiment the transport distance (in the order of 1 m) and mass loss of firebrands are measured to examine their burning behaviours. For the first time, a bimodal distribution (burning and extinction modals) is observed for small firebrands under certain wind speeds (firebrands of 12-mm diameter and 5-mm thickness under a wind speed of 7 m/s in this work). Both the firebrand transport distance and mass loss in the extinction modal are smaller than those in the burning modal. The heat transfer analysis shows that there is a critical wind speed to quench the firebrand and produce a bimodal distribution, and its value increases with both the particle size and the heating duration. The predicted critical wind speed agrees well with experimental measurements.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0015-2684",
doi="10.1007/s10694-017-0647-1",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-017-0647-1"
}