Spot ignition of a wildland fire and its transition to propagation

Supan Wang; Maria Thomsen; Xinyan Huang; Carlos Fernandez-Pello

doi:10.1071/WF23207

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Spot ignition of a wildland fire and its transition to propagation

Supan Wang ^A , Maria Thomsen ^B , Xinyan Huang

^C ^* and Carlos Fernandez-Pello ^D ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A College of Safety Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China.

^B Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile.

^C Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.

^D Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, CA, USA.

^* Correspondence to: xy.huang@polyu.edu.hk, ferpello@me.berkeley.edu

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF23207 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23207

Submitted: 28 December 2023 Accepted: 31 May 2024 Published: 28 June 2024

© 2024 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

Background

The prediction of the propagation of wildland fires is an important socio-technical problem. Wildland fires are often initiated by small spot ignition sources and then spread to larger burning areas.

Methods

Experiments are conducted for the spotting ignition of a forest surface fuel (pine needles) in a relatively large (up to 1 m²), horizontal laboratory bed, and the subsequent fire spread without wind. The spotting ignition sources are a cluster of steel particles, an ember and a small pilot flame.

Key results and conclusions

Wildfire spread has an initial acceleration phase, with the growth of the burned area in the fuel bed following a power law dependence in time, almost independent of the ignition source. Comparison with previous larger-scale experiments and FARSITE modelling of the fire spread over similar fuel beds shows that the power function with time describes well the combined results of the initial wildfire growth and the transition to larger fire propagation for relatively long times.

Implications

The Rothermel equation under different environmental conditions may be extended to describe the initial accelerative growth of a spot fire. This work supports the modelling of fire propagation that currently is geared to a later time in the development of a wildfire.

Keywords: fire growth rate, fire spread model, hot-particle ignition, rate of spread, scale-up fire, spot fire, wildfire, Wildland–Urban-Interface fire.

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