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Effect of Wind on Fire Whirl Over a Line Fire

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Abstract

Fire whirls are often reported to occur in wildland and urban fires due to the effect of ambient wind. This paper presents an experimental study on the fire whirls over a line fire with cross wind, focusing on the occurrence frequency of fire whirls. The experimental observations indicated that the fire whirls induced by a line fire may spread beyond the line fire region with the effect of wind. For the effect of cross wind, it is indicated that the cross wind basically increases the occurrence frequency, while the velocity components parallel or perpendicular to the line fire have competitive effects. A scaling law is presented for the critical wind speed inducing fire whirls based on the experimental data in this work and literature. A method is proposed to estimate the magnitude of the fire whirl height under the critical wind speed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (51476156 and 51120165001), International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (No. 2014DFG72300), and the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2012CB719702). Naian Liu was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. WK 2320000020). Kuibin Zhou was supported by the Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (No. HZ2013-KF09).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban and Industrial Safety, College of Safety Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 210009, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China

    Kuibin Zhou

  2. State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Kuibin Zhou, Naian Liu & Xieshang Yuan

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  1. Kuibin Zhou
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  2. Naian Liu
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  3. Xieshang Yuan
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Correspondence to Naian Liu.

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Zhou, K., Liu, N. & Yuan, X. Effect of Wind on Fire Whirl Over a Line Fire. Fire Technol 52, 865–875 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-015-0507-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-015-0507-9

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