TY - JOUR PY - 2021// TI - Effect of fuel bed width on upslope fire spread: an experimental study JO - Fire technology A1 - Li, Han A1 - Liu, Naian A1 - Xie, Xiaodong A1 - Zhang, Linhe A1 - Yuan, Xieshang A1 - He, Qianqian A1 - Viegas, Domingos X. SP - 1063 EP - 1076 VL - 57 IS - 3 N2 - In this work, a series of experiments across a porous fuel bed of pine excelsior with two sidewalls were conducted under different slope and fuel bed width conditions. It was observed that the fire line stayed straight during fire spread after the initial line ignition for all tests. Flame length and rate of spread (ROS) increased with increasing slope angle or fuel bed width. A dimensionless correlation of ROS was developed that integrated the effects of slope and fuel bed width. For a lower slope angle (≤ 20° in this work), the reverse airflow that denoted natural convective cooling for unburnt fuel was identified from the measured flow velocity data, for which flame radiation was the dominant preheating mechanism. For a higher slope angle (30° in this work), it was identified that the forward airflow from the burning area induced convective heating ahead of the flame front, and thus the fuel preheating was controlled by both flame radiation and convective heating. The effect of convective heating was more significant under larger fuel bed widths.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0015-2684 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-020-01031-8 ID - ref1 ER -