Wildfire Behavior Study in a Mediterranean Pine Stand Using a Physically Based Model

Morvan, Dominique; Méradji, Sofiane; Accary, Gilbert

doi:10.1080/00102200701600978

Cited by 21 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The relative importance of these two heat transfer mechanisms depends on the competition between two forces: inertia due to wind flow, and buoyancy resulting from the density gradient between the hot plume above the fire and ambient air [25,26]. The balance between these two contributions can be quantified by introducing the Byram convective number N C , defined as the ratio between the rate of heat released from the fire and transferred vertically inside the plume versus the power of the inertial force due to the lateral wind flow [27][28][29]:…”

Section: Physical Mechanisms and Characteristics Length Scales Governmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Physical Phenomena and Length Scales Governing the Behaviour of Wildfires: A Case for Physical Modelling

Morvan

2010

Fire Technol

112

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This paper is an overview of the physical mechanisms and length scales governing the propagation of wildfires. One of the objectives is to identify the physical and mathematical constraints in the modelling of wildfires when using a ''fully'' physical approach. The literature highlights two regimes in the propagation of surface fires, i.e. wind-driven fires and plume-dominated fires, which are governed by radiation and convective heat transfer, respectively. This division leads to the identification of two governing length scales: the extinction length characterising the absorption of radiation by vegetation, and the integral turbulent length scale characterising the interaction between wind and canopy. Some numerical results published during the last decade using a fully physical approach are presented and discussed with a focus on the models FIRESTAR, FIRELES, FIRETEC and WFDS. Numerical simulations were compared with experimental data obtained at various scales, from laboratory to field fires in grassland and in Mediterranean shrubland. Some perspectives are presented concerning the potential coupling between physical fire models with mesoscale atmospheric models to study the impacts of wildfires at larger scale. Some of the topics on wildfire physical modelling that need further research are identified in the conclusions.

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Section: Physical Mechanisms and Characteristics Length Scales Governmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Concerning the treatment of turbulence, various approaches were proposed, from TRANS (FIRESTAR, http://www.eufirestar.org, [25,26]), multi-scale LES (FIRETEC, [18] and LES (WFDS, [14,46], FIRELES, [19,48]). …”

Section: Physical Modelling Of Wildfiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical Phenomena and Length Scales Governing the Behaviour of Wildfires: A Case for Physical Modelling

Morvan

2010

Fire Technol

112

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“…To illustrate what kind of information, we can extract from wildfire physical modelling, we have reproduced in this part, some numerical results obtained from numerical simulations carried in two ecosystems: a grassland [19] and a Mediterranean shrubland [20]. To assure a sufficient level of accuracy during all the calculation, the computational domain was discretized using an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), on both side of the pyrolysis front, maintaining a mesh size equal to 0.5 x δ R and 1.0 x δ R along the vertical and the horizontal direction, respectively.…”

Section: Numerical Results Obtained Using the Firestar Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical phenomena in wildfire modelling

Morvan

2008

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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Modeling wildfires is a big challenge in Computational Science. The behavior of fires is governed by very complex physical phenomena including various non linear mechanisms such as: the turbulent transport in the atmosphere, the turbulent mixing between the ambient air and the pyrolysis products resulting from the thermal degradation of the vegetation, the heat transfers by convection and radiation between the flame and the vegetation. During the last decades, progress in the computational resources, allowed the development of a new generation of physical models. This new approach to study the behavior of wildfires is based on the resolution of balance equations (mass, momentum, energy) governing the evolution of the coupled system formed by a vegetation strata with the ambient air located in the vicinity of a fire front. After introducing the main physical phenomena occurring during the propagation of a wildfire, we present some numerical simulations obtained using the FIRESTAR model (EU FP5) for surface fires in grassland and shrubland. Depending on the ratio between the intensity of the wind flow and the buoyant plume above the flame front, the numerical results highlighted two different regimes of propagation: the plume dominated fires and the wind driven fires.

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“…The presentation, even simplified, of the model equations is beyond the scope of this paper which focuses on the results of the validation campaign of the 3D model in an open environment. Reader interested by a detailed description of the model has several reference articles [4][5][6][7], in particular those of Morvan et al 2004 and2009 [6, 8].…”

Section: Modeling and Numerical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pyrolysis process starts once the drying process is completed and charcoal combustion starts once the pyrolysis process is achieved. The constants of the model associated with the charcoal combustion (activation energy and pre-exponential factor) are evaluated empirically from a thermal gravimetric analysis conducted on various samples of solid fuels [7].…”

Section: Modeling and Numerical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulation of Grassland-Fires Behavior Using Firestar3d Model

Méradji¹,

Accary²,

Morvan³

et al. 2016

Topical Problems of Fluid Mechanics 2016

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This study reports 3D numerical simulations of the ignition and the propagation of grassland fires. The mathematical model consists in solving the conservation equations governing the behavior of the coupled system formed by the vegetation and the ambient atmosphere. Based on a finite volume discretization, the computation code is parallelized using OpenMP directives and had been the subject of numerous validations. The model was previously tested on small scale in case of homogeneous litter fires; in this study it is proposed to test it on larger scale in case of grassland fires. The results are in fairly good agreement with experimental data, with predictions of operational empirical-models developed in Australia (MK5) and in the USA (BEHAVE), as well as with and predictions of physical models (FIRETEC, WFDS, FireStar2D). The comparison with the literature is based on the estimation of the rate of fire spread (ROS) and the analysis of the fire-front shape.

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Wildfire Behavior Study in a Mediterranean Pine Stand Using a Physically Based Model

Cited by 21 publications

References 26 publications

Physical Phenomena and Length Scales Governing the Behaviour of Wildfires: A Case for Physical Modelling

Physical Phenomena and Length Scales Governing the Behaviour of Wildfires: A Case for Physical Modelling

Physical phenomena in wildfire modelling

Numerical Simulation of Grassland-Fires Behavior Using Firestar3d Model

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