Wei Tang Defense on July 14, 2017 at 2:00 PM

Abstract: Wildland fires pose a significant threat to the environment and society at large. While steps have been taken to predict their behavior, the large amount of unknowns and the intermittent nature of the fire itself makes predictions much harder than those typically encountered with the built environment, especially under the influence of wind. It’s well known that the spread rate of a fire depends largely on forward heating from the flame to unburnt fuels. In wildland fires, the intermittent nature of fame is thought to be important to the flame spread process. In this work, both the averaged and time-dependent aspects of the flame will be studied, including the total heat flux distribution on the downstream surface, flame extension and attachment, and flame pulsation frequencies. Correlations of these properties, dependent on both fire size and ambient wind will provide a means to describe the fuel heating and ignition processes in wildland fires.