TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2017//
TI  - The wind effect on the transport and burning of firebrands
JO  - Fire technology
A1  - Song, Jiayun
A1  - Huang, Xinyan
A1  - Liu, Naian
A1  - Li, Han
A1  - Zhang, Linhe
SP  - 1555
EP  - 1568
VL  - 53
IS  - 4
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 0015-2684
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-017-0647-1
ID  - ref1
ER  -