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Numerical Simulation Of Live Chaparral Fire Behavior Using Firetec, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, Shankar Mahalingam, Jesse Canfield, Rodman Linn

Lulu Sun

Fire spread through chaparral fuels is a significant feature of wildland fire in southern California. In order to study the detailed physical processes involved during fire spread, FIRETEC, a coupled atmosphere/wildfire behavior model was refined to examine chaparral fire behavior. FIRETEC combines a sophisticated fine-scale model to simulate a three- dimensional wildfire, moving over a terrain-following finite volume grid, with the motions of the local atmosphere. It accounts for the microscopic details of a fire with macroscopic resolution by dividing quantities into mean and fluctuating parts and the resulting transport equations are solved by using a finite difference method. In …