Experiments to Quantify Firebrand Production from Roofing Assembly Combustion

Published

November 12, 2017

Author(s)

Samuel Manzello, Sayaka Suzuki, Tomohiro Naruse

Abstract

Large outdoor fires present a risk to the built environment. One example often in the international media reports are wildfires that spread into communities, referred to as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires. Another example are large urban fires including those that have occurred after earthquakes. Firebrands are a key mechanism on how rapidly fires spread in these types of fires, as was observed in the 2016 Itoigawa City Fire in Niigata, Japan. To this end, an experimental protocol has been developed to ignite full-scale roofing assemblies and quantify the degree of firebrand production during the combustion process. As wind is an important factor in firebrand generation, the experiments were conducted under a range of wind speeds at the Building Research Institute's (BRI) Fire Research Wind Tunnel Facility (FRWTF). Results of these experiments will be presented and discussed

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 55th Japanese Combustion Symposium

Conference Dates

November 13-15, 2017

Conference Location

Toyama, JP

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Ignition, Firebrands, Large Outdoor Fires

Citation

Manzello, S. , Suzuki, S. and Naruse, T. (2017), Experiments to Quantify Firebrand Production from Roofing Assembly Combustion, Proceedings of the 55th Japanese Combustion Symposium, Toyama, JP, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=924268 (Accessed October 14, 2025)