Downward Flame Spread with Radiant Preheating

Tony Sun
Abstract

Methods and Materials

Fire researchers face several problems with obtaining data due to the
dangers and costs related to fires. In addition, while modeling of wildland
fires using test beds, test plots, and small prescribed burns is easily
replicated, actual wildland fires are not. Wildland fires have many specific
variables that determine their character and individual modeling only
provides small glimpses into the overall picture. As researchers focus on
these specific variables through modeling involving cardboard, plywood,
excelsior, match sticks, live fuels, deal fuels, liquid fuels, and wood cribs,
they are able learn more about wildland fires in general. The United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) uses laser-cut cardboard fuel particles
to study fire spread through uniform fuel beds. In their wind tunnel facility
at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, the cardboard tines ignite at the
top and burn down. Data on downward flame spread rate compared to
other characterizing fire parameters was analyzed. Downward flame
spread rate was correlated to fire intensity and flame length.

The wind tunnel studies were executed at the USDAs Missoula Fire
Sciences Laboratory. The experiments were conducted according to the
USDAs protocol. The fuel used was laser cut, recycled, brown, chip
cardboard. The cardboard was 1.588mm thick.

Background
Wildland re generally describes the non-structure res that occur in the
wildland. There are two types of wildland fire, wildfires and prescribed fires.
Wildfires are unplanned works of nature of ignitions and prescribed fires are
planned ignitions. Prescribed fires are useful for reducing the amount dead
debris to reduce the chances of future catastrophic fires.
Wildfires are extremely destructive events, causing millions of dollars of
property damage every year while also causing a dramatic loss of human life.
The unpredictability, speed, and raw destructive power of wildfires make them
extremely difficult to contain, and thus predicting the path of a wildfire is
extremely important in the efforts of forestry services and fire managers.
Current models of prediction of these fires are not accurate enough, as even
burns controlled by fire managers sometimes escape the intended burn area
and cause much larger fires at the very least their flame fronts and spread
patterns are still erratic. According to Finney et al, The sequence and
influences of known combustion and heat transfer processes cannot be reliably
applied to fire spread. This suggests the need to separate the models of heat
transfer and fires spread to develop a reliable new theory of fire spread.

The cardboard fuel was cut into combs or rakes; part of one comb can
be seen in the above figure. The individual tines were connected along a
common spine. A single tine is referred to as an individual fuel particle
or element. All the tines shared the same dimensions except for height. The
cardboard tines ranged in length from 101.6 mm to 355.6 mm for these 20
experiments.
Fuel beds were constructed of rows of these cardboard combs inside of a
wind tunnel. Each fuel bed contained at least 80 rows of cardboard combs.
At the upwind edge of the fuel bed, excelsior and gasoline were ignited.
This fire spread through the fuel elements which burned row by row.
Visual cameras (high speed data recorder and infrared camera) were used
to record data.

Results
Intensity is the measure of energy output referred to as fireline intensity
[18]. The units are /. The intensity of the twenty fires ranged from
159.146 / to 2738.574 /. The pertinent fire parameters can be
seen in the table. The fire intensity is related to the radiative heat flux
given off by the fire. The fire intensity is related to the spread rate as

~

The spread rate, , is related to the fire intensity, . The primes indicate
one experiment and the original variables indicate a different, related,
properly scaled experiment.
The spread rate is related to the downward flame spread because a tine is
on fire the length of time it takes between the instant the tine enters the
fires burning zone and the moment it leaves the burning zone because the
tine has extinguished. The downward spread rate,, is related to the spread
rate, flame zone depth, and fuel height as follows:

Relating equations 1 and 2, the relation between downward spread rate and
intensity can be seen:

~

The relations for wind speed and flame length are obtained similarly:


~
~

Thus, we can determine the relationship between downward flame spread
rate and flame length, wind speed, and flame intensity.
Downward Flame Length
Spread Rate (m)
(mm/s)

Intensity
(kW/m)

In the process of ignition, the approaching flame front first heats the
surrounding environment and the air temperature rises from ambient to the
temperature of dehydration to heat the fuel particle. At the temperature of
dehydration, water in the fuel particle will be evaporated. In order for the fuel
particle to ignite, it must go through pyrolysis to change from a solid to a gas
to produce pyrolyzates. As an endothermic reaction, pyrolysis requires energy
in order to occur. The pyrolyzates are subject to methods of convection,
advection and diffusion. During advection, the bulk fluid of pyrolyzates will
be moved. Diffusion occurs in a still container and the particles will spread
evenly throughout the container. For combustion to occur, there must be a
continuous source of oxygen for gas-phase fuel oxidation. This process of
ignition is an exothermic reaction, thermal energy is being released into the
environment.
In an ideal stoichiometric reaction, the products of combustion will be CO2
and H2O. At the iso-stoichiometric surface, visible flame occurs between
atmospheric surroundings and the gas phase fuel. The flames that are visible
are the result of small particles of non-combusted soot that are glowing
brightly because of heat. Ignition is the presence of visible flame rather than
the material property of fuel temperature.

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The rate of spread and fire parameters (e.g. flame length) were calculated
using the visual data. This data was analyzed to measure a variety of
parameters of downward flame spread. The mean rate of downward flame
spread over a tine was taken for an entire burn. The downward flame
spread rate should correlate to flame length, intensity, and wind speed.

A. Linan and F. A. Williams, Fundamental aspects of combustion, New

York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
H. C. Hottel, "Fire modeling," Proceedings of the International Symposium
on the Use of Models in Fire Research, vol. 786, pp. 32-47, 9-10
November 1959.
J. E. Keeley, "Fire intensity, fire severity and burn severity: a brief review
and suggested usage," International Journal of Wildland Fire, vol. 18, no.
1, pp. 116-126, 2009.
B. A. Adam, N. K. Akafuah, M. Finney, J. Forthofer and K. Saito, "A study
of flame spread in engineered cardboard fuelbeds: Part II: Scaling law
approach," in Progress in Scale Modeling, K. Saito, A. Ito, Y.Nakamura
and K. Kuwana, Eds., Cham, Springer, 2014, pp. 85-96.
S. Pyne, P. Andrews and R. Laven, Introduction to Wildland Fires, Second
ed., New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2000.
M. Finney, J. Cohen, S. McAllister and W. Jolly, "On the need for a theory
of wildland fire spread," International Journay of Wildland Fire, vol. 22,
no. 1, pp. 25-36, 2013.
J. R. Hall, "The total cost of fire in the United States," National Fire
Protection Association, Quincy, MA, 2014.

.3

1065.16

0.22

Maximum

28.46

2.5

2738.55

1.34

Average

12.14

1.09

1065.16

0.75

Flame Length versus Rate of Spread

In future work, more parameters such as wind velocity and fuel zone depth
can be adjusted to test their effect on downward flame spread. In able to
apply the properties it is necessary to characterize thermophysical properties
of cardboard tines to compare to realistic wildland fuels.

References

2.5

Intensity versus Rate of Spread

There are many parameters that affect the rate of downward flame spread.
The results indicate that faster downward flame spread is correlated to
greater flame length, intensity, and wind speed. However, the strongest
correlation was between downward flame spread and intensity. This
suggests that the power of the flame plays the largest role in downward
flame spread.

Wind Speed
(m/s)

Minimum

At a fundamental level, fire requires three things for combustion; fuel, heat,
and oxygen. These three requirements are commonly referred to as the fire
triangle. The academic description of a solid fuel igniting follows.

Conclusion and Future Work

Wind Speed versus Rate of Spread

Acknowledgements
Brittany Adam, Justin English, Dr. Saito, Dr. Akafuah
Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of Kentucky
Kentucky Young Researchers Program
Fayette Countys Math, Science & Technology Center, Lexington,
KY
USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula
Fire Sciences Laboratory