On the wind advection influence on the fire spread across a fuel bed: modelling by a semi-physical approach and testing with experiments

This paper is devoted to the study of the advection effect on the fire spread across a fuel bed by means of a semi-physical model. This work is a step forward in our general process which consists in elaborating a simple model of fire spread to be used in a simulator. To this end, a thermal balance including an advective term coupled with a wind velocity profile in the burning zone is presented. Following our general procedure that consists in using the multiphase approach to elaborate our semi-physical model, we used the momentum equation of the multiphase model to set this wind profile. The predictions of the model were then compared to experimental data obtained for fire spread conducted across pine needle litters, Different slope values and varying wind velocities were considered. The experimental tendency for the variation of the rate of spread was predicted, especially for the higher values of wind. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.