Towards Generating Wind-Driven Firebrand Showers Characteristic of Burning Structures

Published

November 16, 2015

Author(s)

Samuel L. Manzello, Sayaka Suzuki

Abstract

Firebrands have been known to be a significant cause of structure ignition in large outdoor fires, such as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires, large international problem, and urban fires, common in Japan. Sparse data exist with regard to firebrand production from burning structures or actual large outdoor fires in general. To this end, an experimental database is being generated from firebrand generation from structures. In the first phase of this work, an experiment was conducted to collect firebrands from a full- scale structure. Subsequently, structure components were ignited, and during the combustion process, firebrands were collected to determine the size/mass distribution generated from such real-scale structural components under varying wind speed. The purpose of those experiments was to determine if useful information regarding firebrand generation can be obtained from simple building components tests. Component experiments are far simpler than the full-scale structure experiments. This paper will focus on how these detailed firebrand size and mass distributions are being used to generate firebrand showers using a continuous-feed firebrand generator installed in a full-scale wind tunnel facility, with the intent to experimentally simulate firebrand showers produced from structures in large outdoor fires.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Japanese Combustion Symposium

Conference Dates

November 16-18, 2015

Conference Location

Tsukuba

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

Ignition, Firebrands, Large Outdoor Fires

Citation

Manzello, S. and Suzuki, S. (2015), Towards Generating Wind-Driven Firebrand Showers Characteristic of Burning Structures, Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Japanese Combustion Symposium, Tsukuba, -1 (Accessed April 26, 2024)