On the intermittent nature of forest fire spread – Part 2†
Domingos Xavier Filomeno Carlos Viegas
A * , Jorge Rafael Nogueira Raposo A , Carlos Fernando Morgado Ribeiro A , Luís Reis A , Abdelrahman Abouali A , Luís Mário Ribeiro A and Carlos Xavier Pais Viegas A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Coimbra, ADAI, Rua Luís Reis Santos, Pólo II, 3030‐788 Coimbra, Portugal.
* Correspondence to: xavier.viegas@dem.uc.pt
International Journal of Wildland Fire 31(10) 967-981 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF21098
Submitted: 13 August 2021 Accepted: 1 August 2022 Published: 28 September 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Based on analysis of the interaction between a spreading fire and its surrounding environment, in nominally constant and uniform boundary conditions, it is observed that the evolution of the fire front is characterised by fluctuations of its properties, including (in particular) its rate of spread (ROS). Using a database with a wide range of fires with different time–space scales, it is shown that the amplitude of the fluctuation in ROS is proportional to the average value of the ROS and that the frequency of oscillation varies with the type of fire, and for a given fuel, increases with the average ROS. In fast-spreading fires, the large amplitude of ROS increase and sudden decrease promote the intermittent behaviour of the fire. In general, the amplitude and period required for the ROS increase are larger than for its decrease. However, the acceleration and deceleration phases in junction fires do not follow this rule, suggesting the existence of different convective processes of interaction between the flow and fire. This oscillation explains the variability in many fires at all scales and challenges the current interpretation based on the three factors affecting fire spread and the classification of wind or topography-driven fires.
Keywords: dynamic fire behaviour, fire acceleration, fire growth, fire modelling, fire oscillations, forest fire behaviour, intermittent fire behaviour, oscillatory fire behaviour.
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