Numerical Simulation of Shrubland-Fire Spread: A Parametric Study
Understanding wildfire propagation is essential for improving prediction capabilities and informing effective fire-management strategies. This work synthesizes two complementary parametric studies conducted with FireStar3D, a physics-based CFD wildfire model, to investigate how the rate of spread (R...
محفوظ في:
| المؤلف الرئيسي: | |
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| التنسيق: | masterThesis |
| منشور في: |
2025
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | http://hdl.handle.net/10725/17600 https://doi.org/10.26756/th.2023.845 http://libraries.lau.edu.lb/research/laur/terms-of-use/thesis.php |
| الوسوم: |
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| الملخص: | Understanding wildfire propagation is essential for improving prediction capabilities and informing effective fire-management strategies. This work synthesizes two complementary parametric studies conducted with FireStar3D, a physics-based CFD wildfire model, to investigate how the rate of spread (ROS) and other fire behavior characteristics relate to Byram’s convective number (a non-dimensional number characterizing fire behavior) across both wind-driven and plume-dominated shrubland fire regimes. A total of 184 simulations were performed, covering a broad range of wind speeds, fuel-bed heights, fuel volume-fractions, and fuel moisture contents, enabling a systematic evaluation of key physical drivers of fire dynamics. Results consistently show that the ROS scales with wind speed in the wind-driven regime, in line with established empirical rules of thumb. Across both regimes, Byram’s convective number was found to inherently capture the integrated effects of wind, fuel moisture, and fuel height on fire behavior. However, fuel volume-fraction emerged as an additional and significant parameter influencing ROS due to its strong impact on heat transfer, demonstrating that Byram’s number alone is insufficient to fully describe spread dynamics without explicit consideration of fuel type. The study also confirmed that certain fire properties, such as the thermal-plume angle in the plume-dominated regime, scale solely with Byram’s number. The fire-establishment phase was examined in detail, revealing contrasting behavior between regimes: in wind-driven conditions, the fire spreads slightly faster during establishment than at steady state, whereas in plumedominated fires, spread is slightly slower. In both regimes, the duration of this transient is strongly influenced by fuel volume-fraction in wind-driven fires and predominantly by Byram’s number in plume-dominated ones. Collectively, these findings improve the physical understanding of how ROS and firestructure characteristics link to Byram’s convective number, while highlighting the independent role of fuel volume-fraction. The combined insights contribute to more robust fire-spread modeling frameworks and support the development of enhanced predictive tools for wildfire management. |
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