Other Engineering Commons^™

Ir-Based Estimation Of Velocities Above Flames Spreading Over Different Fuels, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, David R. Weise, Shankar Mahalingam

Lulu Sun

Wildfire spread in living vegetation such as chaparral in California and eucalyptus forests in Australia often causes significant damage to infrastructure and ecosystems. A physically based empirical model to predict fire spread rate is used in the United States to assist in a variety of fire management operations. The spread model does not adequately describe the chemical processes of combustion in live fuels. Prior to describing and modeling the chemical processes of combustion in wildland fuels using computational fluid dynamics, we are investigating a technique to non-intrusively measure flame gas velocities using thermal imagery. By tracing "hot" pixels through successive …