Comparison of three methods to quantify the fire spread rate in laboratory experiments
J. S. Gould A , A. L. Sullivan A B , R. Hurley A and V. Koul A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: andrew.sullivan@csiro.au
International Journal of Wildland Fire 26(10) 877-883 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF17038
Submitted: 23 February 2017 Accepted: 14 July 2017 Published: 20 September 2017
Abstract
Different methods can be used to measure the time and distance of travel of a fire and thus its speed. The selection of a particular method will depend on the experimental objectives, design, scale, location (in the laboratory or field), required accuracy and resources available. In this study, measurements from ocular observation (directly by eye), visible spectrum video imagery and thermocouple instrumentation were used to compare their performance in quantifying the time of arrival and rate of spread of a fire burning across a eucalypt forest litter fuel bed in a combustion wind tunnel. All methods gave similar results, but there were some significant differences depending on the dryness of the fuel and speed of the wind.
Additional keywords: combustion wind tunnel, eucalyptus fuel, ocular observation, rate of spread, thermocouple, video imagery.
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