A transport model for computer simulation of wildfires
- Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
Realistic self-determining simulation of wildfires is a difficult task because of a large variety of important length scales (including scales on the size of twigs or grass and the size of large trees), imperfect data, complex fluid mechanics and heat transfer, and very complicated chemical reactions. The author uses a transport approach to produce a model that exhibits a self-determining propagation rate. The transport approach allows him to represent a large number of environments such as those with nonhomogeneous vegetation and terrain. He accounts for the microscopic details of a fire with macroscopic resolution by dividing quantities into mean and fluctuating parts similar to what is done in traditional turbulence modeling. These divided quantities include fuel, wind, gas concentrations, and temperature. Reaction rates are limited by the mixing process and not the chemical kinetics. The author has developed a model that includes the transport of multiple gas species, such as oxygen and volatile hydrocarbons, and tracks the depletion of various fuels and other stationary solids and liquids. From this model he develops a simplified local burning model with which he performs a number of simulations that demonstrate that he is able to capture the important physics with the transport approach. With this simplified model he is able to pick up the essence of wildfire propagation, including such features as acceleration when transitioning to upsloping terrain, deceleration of fire fronts when they reach downslopes, and crowning in the presence of high winds.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 332740
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-98-1591; CONF-9709141-PROC.; ON: DE99000778; TRN: IM9916%%42
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 5. joint Russian-American computational mathematics conference, Albuquerque, NM (United States), 2-5 Sep 1997; Other Information: PBD: [1997]; Related Information: Is Part Of Proceedings of the 5. joint Russian-American computational mathematics conference; PB: 312 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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