Investigation of the Impact of Pinus Silvestris Pine Needles Bed Parameters on the Spread of Ground Fire in Still Air

Systematic experiments and complementing numerical simulations have been reported for the first time to understand the spread of a ground fire over pine needle bed of the Siberian boreal forests (Pinus silvestris) in still air. Using equipment and instrumentations specifically developed for the purpose, careful experiments have been conducted to reveal the effects of the bed width, fuel moisture content, fuel load, and the packing ratio on flame spread rate, temperature distributions in both gas and condensed phases. Temperatures are measured using fine thermocouples fixed at various locations from the bed surface. The surface temperature of the bed during flame propagation has been measured using a micro-thermocouple inserted in a single pine needle in the bed as well as using an infrared (IR) camera. Further, for the first time, the total and radiant heat fluxes from the flame to the bed surface have been measured using compact cooled sensors placed inside the needle bed, over which the flame propagates. In order to understand more about the flow field and flame spread process, a 3D numerical model based on the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) has been used to simulate few of the experiments. The processes governing pine needle pyrolysis, char oxidation, gas phase combustion and radiation have been modeled using simplified approaches reported in literature. The model is capable of predicting experimentally measured flame propagation velocities for most of the cases quite well.