Insitu Mass Burning Rates of Individual Firebrands

Published

December 17, 2025

Author(s)

Savannah Wessies, Jiann Yang

Abstract

Firebrands are a leading cause of structure ignitions in wildland-urban interface fires. Understanding the burning rates of firebrands can provide insight on the ability of firebrands to ignite the substrates they land on. Experiments were designed to determine the effects of wood type, air flow speed, and air flow temperature on the burning rates of individual disk-shaped firebrands resting on a flat, non-combustible surface. The experiments showed differences in the burning rates between the wood types and flow speeds, but the effects of air flow temperature were not significant. A simplified burning rate model was developed, and model prediction matched well with experimental results under certain conditions. Additionally, dimensional analysis was used to correlate the experimental data.

Citation

International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer

Volume

172

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2025.110287

Local Download

Keywords

firebrands, wildland fire, burning rates, mass loss

Citation

Wessies, S. and Yang, J. (2025), Insitu Mass Burning Rates of Individual Firebrands, International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2025.110287, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958891 (Accessed January 16, 2026)