CONTINUUM MECHANICS, FLUIDS, HEAT

Two dimensional averaged mathematical model of forest fire spread

VALERIY PERMINOV Department of Mathematics and Natural Science Belovo Branch of Kemerovo State University Sovetskaya Street, 41, Belovo, Kemerovo region 652600 RUSSIA
valerperminov@gmail.com

Abstract: - Annually in Russia more than 1 million of hectares of the forest area are burnt as a result of a forest fire. The most dangerous form of the forest fire is crown fire which amounts to 70 % of burnt area and causes the largest damage. Great interest of the problem concerned is also explained by the influence of forest fires on the ground level layer of the atmosphere, which causes medium temperature drop due to the area smoke screen and leads to the damage or delay of agricultural plant ripening and different ecological disasters. Considering that, natural investigations of these problems are merely impossible, methods of mathematical modeling are urgent. Mathematical model of forest fire was based on an analysis of known experimental data and using concept and methods from reactive media mechanics. In this paper the assignment and theoretical investigations of the problems of crown forest fire spread in windy condition were carried out. In this context, a study - mathematical modeling - of the conditions of forest fire spreading that would make it possible to obtain a detailed picture of the change in the velocity, temperature and component concentration fields with time, and determine as well as the limiting conditions of forest fire propagation is of interest.. Key-Words: Mathematical model, forest fire, ignition, combustion, control volume, discrete analogue. for gaseous and condensed phases, volume of fraction of condensed phase (dry organic substance, moisture, condensed pyrolysis products, mineral part of forest fuel).

1 Introduction
A great deal of work has been done on the theoretical problem of crown forest fire initiation. Crown fires are initiated by convective and radiative heat transfer from surface fires. However, convection is the main heat transfer mechanism (Van Wagner [1]). The proposed in [1] theory depends on three simple crown properties: crown base height, bulk density of forest combustible materials and moisture content of forest fuel. Also, crown fire initiation and hazard have been studied and modeled in details later ( Alexander [2]; Van Wagner [3]; Xanthopoulos [4]; Rothermel [5]; Cruz and others [6]; Albini and others [7]; Scott and Reinhardt [8]).The more complete discussion of the problem of crown forest fires is provided by coworkers at Tomsk University (Grishin [9]; Grishin and Perminov [10]; Perminov [11,12]). In particular, a mathematical model of forest fires was obtained by Grishin [9] based on an analysis of known and original experimental data (Grishin [9]; Konev [13], and using concepts and methods from reactive media mechanics. The physical two-phase models used by Morvan and Dupuy [14,15] may be considered as a continuation and extension of the formulation proposed in [9]. This study gives a two dimensional averaged mathematical setting and method of numerical solution of a problem of a forest fire spread. The boundary-value problem is solved numerically using the method of splitting according to physical processes. It was based on numerical solution of two dimensional Reynolds equations for the description of turbulent flow taking into account for diffusion equations chemical components and equations of energy conservation

2 Mathematical model
It is assumed that the forest during a forest fire can be modeled as 1) a multi-phase, multistoried, spatially
heterogeneous medium; 2) in the fire zone the forest is a porous-dispersed, two-temperature, single-velocity, reactive medium; 3) the forest canopy is supposed to be non - deformed medium (trunks, large branches, small twigs and needles), which affects only the magnitude of the force of resistance in the equation of conservation of momentum in the gas phase, i.e., the medium is assumed to be quasi-solid (almost non-deformable during wind gusts); 4) let there be a so-called ventilated forest massif, in which the volume of fractions of condensed forest fuel phases, consisting of dry organic matter, water in liquid state, solid pyrolysis products, and ash, can be neglected compared to the volume fraction of gas phase (components of air and gaseous pyrolysis products); 5) the flow has a developed turbulent nature and molecular transfer is neglected; 6) gaseous phase density doesnt depend on the pressure because of the low velocities of the flow in comparison with the velocity of the sound. Let the point x1, x2 , x3= 0 is situated at the centre of the surface forest fire source at the height of the roughness level, axis 0x1 directed parallel to the Earths surface to the right in the direction of the unperturbed wind speed, axis 0x2 directed perpendicular to 0x1 and axis 0x3 directed upward (Fig. 1).

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CONTINUUM MECHANICS, FLUIDS, HEAT

The system of equations (1)(7) must be solved taking into account the initial and boundary conditions
t = 0 : v1 = 0, v2 = 0, v3 = 0, T = Te , c = c e , Ts = Te , 1 = ie ;

x1 = x1e : v1 = Ve , v2 = 0,

v3 = 0, T = Te , c = ce , x1

c UR + cU R / 2 = 0 ; 3k x1

(8)

Figure 1 Because of the horizontal sizes of forest massif more than height of forest h, system of equations of general mathematical model of forest fire [9] was integrated between the limits from height of the roughness level - 0 to h. Besides, suppose that

dx3 = h

v c v1 v2 = 0, = 0, 3 = 0, = 0, x1 x1 x1 x1 (9) T c UR c = 0, + UR = 0 ; x1 3k x1 2 v3 c v v2 x2 = x20 : 1 = 0 , = 0, = 0, = 0, x2 x2 x2 x2 (10) T c UR c = 0, + UR = 0 ; x2 3k x2 2 v c v v x2 = x2 e : 1 = 0, 2 = 0, 3 = 0, = 0, x2 x2 x2 x2 (11) T c UR c = 0, + UR = 0 . x2 3k x2 2

x1 = x1e :
x3 = 0 : v1 = 0 , v2 = 0 , c UR c c = 0, + UR = 0 , x3 3k x3 2

- average value of . The problem formulated above is

reduced to a solution of the following system of equations:

v3 = v30 , T = Tg , x1 , x2 v3 = 0, T = Te , x1 > , x2 > ;

(12)

+ ( v j ) =Q (m m + ) / h, j = 1,2,3; (1) t xj
dv p i = + ( viv ) sc d v i | v | g i j dt xj xj Qvi + ( i i+ ) / h, i = 1,2,3; dT = ( c p v j T ) + q 5 R5 v (T Ts ) + dt x j
+ (qT q T ) / h;

x3 = x3 e :

(2)

v1 v v c = 0, 2 = 0, 3 = 0, = 0, x3 x3 x3 x3 T c UR c = 0, + UR = 0 . x3 3k x3 2

(13)

c p

Here and above

(3)

d is the symbol of the total (substantial) dt

dc = ( v j c ) + R5 Qc + dt xj
+ + ( J J ) / h, = 1,3;

(4)

c UR x j 3k x j

+ k (cU R 4TS4 ) + (q R q R ) / h = 0;

(5)

c
i i =1

pi

1 t 3 3 t

TS = q 3 R3 q 2 R2 + k (cU R 4TS4 ) t + V (T TS ); 2 = R1 , 2 = R2 , t M 4 = C R1 C R3 , 4 = 0; M1 t

(6)

(7)

c
=1

= 1, pe = RT

M
=1

, v = (v1 ,v2 , v3 ), g = (0,0, g ) .

derivative; v is the coefficient of phase exchange; density of gas dispersed phase, t is time; vi - the velocity components; T, TS, - temperatures of gas and solid phases, UR - density of radiation energy, k coefficient of radiation attenuation, P - pressure; cp constant pressure specific heat of the gas phase, cpi, i, i specific heat, density and volume of fraction of condensed phase (1 dry organic substance, 2 moisture, 3 condensed pyrolysis products, 4 mineral part of forest fuel), Ri the mass rates of chemical reactions, qi thermal effects of chemical reactions; kg , kS - radiation absorption coefficients for gas and condensed phases; Te - the ambient temperature; c mass concentrations of - component of gas - dispersed medium, index =1,2,3, where 1 corresponds to the density of oxygen, 2 - to carbon monoxide CO, 3 - to carbon dioxide and inert components of air; R universal gas constant; M , MC, and M molecular mass of components of the gas phase, carbon and air mixture; g is the gravity acceleration; cd is an empirical coefficient of the resistance of the vegetation, s is the specific surface
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CONTINUUM MECHANICS, FLUIDS, HEAT

of the forest fuel in the given forest stratum. In system of equations (1)-(7) are introduced the next designations:

m = v3 , i = vi v 3 , J = v3 c , J T = v 3T .
Upper indexes + and - designate values of functions at x3=h and x3=0 correspondingly. It is assumed that

heat and mass exchange of fire front and boundary layer of atmosphere are governed by Newton law and
written using the formulas:
+ (qT qT ) / h = (T Te ) / h, + ( J J ) / h = (c ce ) / hc p .

To close the system (1)(7), the components of the tensor of turbulent stresses, and the turbulent heat and mass fluxes are determined using the local-equilibrium model of turbulence (Grishin, [9]). The system of equations (1) (7) contains terms associated with turbulent diffusion, thermal conduction, and convection, and needs to be closed. The components of the tensor of turbulent stresses viv j , as well as the turbulent fluxes of heat and

mass vj c pT , vj c are written in terms of the gradients

of the average flow properties using the formulas

v v vi v j = T i + i x j xi
v j cp T = t

2 K i j , 3

To define source terms which characterize inflow (outflow of mass) in a volume unit of the gas-dispersed phase, the following formulae were used for the rate of formulation of the gas-dispersed mixture m , outflow of oxygen R51 , changing carbon monoxide R52 .

c T , v j c = Dt , xj xj

t = t c p / Prt , Dt = t / Sct , t = c K 2 / ,

Q = (1 c ) R1 + R2 +

Mc M1 R3 , R51 = R3 R5 , M1 2M 2

R52 = g (1 c ) R1 R5 , R53 = 0.
Here g mass fraction of gas combustible products of pyrolysis, 4 and 5 empirical constants. Reaction rates of these various contributions (pyrolysis, evaporation, combustion of coke and volatile combustible products of pyrolysis) are approximated by Arrhenius laws whose parameters (pre-exponential constant ki and activation energy Ei) are evaluated using data for mathematical models [9,11].
E E R1 = k1 11 exp 1 , R2 = k 2 2 2Ts0.5 exp 2 , RTs RTs E R3 = k3 3 s c1 exp 3 RTs c1M , R5 = k5 M 2 M1
0.25

where t, t, Dt are the coefficients of turbulent viscosity, thermal conductivity, and diffusion, respectively; Prt, Sct are the turbulent Prandtl and Schmidt numbers, which were assumed to be equal to 1. In dimensional form, the coefficient of dynamic turbulent viscosity is determined using local equilibrium model of turbulence [9]. The thermodynamic, thermophysical and structural characteristics correspond to the forest fuels in the canopy of a different (for example pine [9,11,13]) type of forest. The system of equations (1)(7) must be solved taking into account the initial and boundary conditions. The thermodynamic, thermophysical and structural characteristics correspond to the forest fuels in the canopy of a different type of forest; for example, pine forest (Grishin, Perminov [11]).

3 Numerical method and results

.

c2 M 2.25 E exp 5 T M2 RT

The initial values for volume of fractions of condensed phases are determined using the expressions:

1e =

d (1 z )

, 2e =

Wd

, 3e =

c1e 1 3

where d -bulk density for surface layer, z coefficient of ashes of forest fuel, W forest fuel moisture content. It is supposed that the optical properties of a medium are independent of radiation wavelength (the assumption that the medium is grey), and the so-called diffusion approximation for radiation flux density were used for a mathematical description of radiation transport during forest fires.

The boundary-value problem (1)(13) is solved numerically using the method of splitting according to physical processes (Perminov [11]). In the first stage, the hydrodynamic pattern of flow and distribution of scalar functions was calculated. The system of ordinary differential equations of chemical kinetics obtained as a result of splitting was then integrated. A discrete analog was obtained by means of the control volume method using the SIMPLE like algorithm (Patankar [16] ) The accuracy of the program was checked by the method of inserted analytical solutions. Analytical expressions for the unknown functions were substituted in (1)(7) and the closure of the equations were calculated. This was then treated as the source in each equation. Next, with the aid of the algorithm described above, the values of the functions used were inferred with an accuracy of not less than 1%. The effect of the dimensions of the control volumes on the solution was studied by diminishing them. The time step was selected automatically.

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CONTINUUM MECHANICS, FLUIDS, HEAT

Fields of temperature, velocity, component mass fractions, and volume fractions of phases were obtained numerically. The distribution of basic functions shows that the process of crown forest fire initiation goes through the next stages. The first stage is related to increasing maximum temperature in the ground cover with the result that a surface fire source appears. At this process stage over the fire source a thermal wind is formed a zone of heated forest fire pyrolysis products which are mixed with air, float up and penetrate into the crowns of trees. As a result, forest fuels in the tree crowns are heated, moisture evaporates and gaseous and dispersed pyrolysis products are generated. Ignition of gaseous pyrolysis products of the ground cover occurs at the next stage, and that of gaseous pyrolysis products in the forest canopy occurs at the last stage. As a result of heating of forest fuel elements of crown, moisture evaporates, and pyrolysis occurs accompanied by the release of gaseous products, which then ignite and burn away in the forest canopy. At the moment of ignition the gas combustible products of pyrolysis burns away, and the concentration of oxygen is rapidly reduced. The temperatures of both phases reach a maximum value at the point of ignition. The ignition processes is of a gas phase nature. Note also that the transfer of energy from the fire source takes place due to radiation; the value of radiation heat flux density is small compared to that of the convective heat flux. In the vicinity of the source of heat and mass release, heated air masses and products of pyrolysis and combustion float up. At Ve 0, the wind field in the forest canopy interacts with the gas-jet obstacle that forms from the surface forest fire source and from the ignited forest canopy base and burn away in the forest canopy. In the vicinity of the source of heat and mass release, heated air masses and products of pyrolysis and combustion float up. At Ve 0, the wind field in the forest canopy interacts with the gas-jet obstacle that forms from the surface forest fire source and from the ignited forest canopy base. On the windward side the movement of the air flowing past the ignition region accelerates. Figures 2a,b, 3a,b and 4a,b present the distribution of temperature T (T = T / Te , Te = 300 K ) (15., 2 4.5, 3 4, 4 3.5) for gas phase, oxygen c1 (1 0.5, 2 0.7, 3 0.8), volatile combustible products of pyrolysis c 2 concentrations (1 0.05, 2- 0.1, 3 0.5) ( c = / c1e , 1e = 0.23 ) for wind velocity Ve= 10 m/s: and a) t=3 sec., b) t=5 sec. We can note that the isotherms is moved in the forest canopy and deformed by the action of wind. Similarly, the fields of component concentrations are deformed. It is concluded that the forest fire begins to spread.

Figure.2a

Figure.2b

Figure. 3a.

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CONTINUUM MECHANICS, FLUIDS, HEAT

4 Conclusion
The results of calculation give an opportunity to evaluate critical condition of the forest fire spread, which allows applying the given model for preventing fires. It overestimates the velocity of crown forest fire spread that depends on crown properties: bulk density, moisture content of forest fuel and etc. The model proposed there give a detailed picture of the change in the velocity, temperature and component concentration fields with time, and determine as well as the influence of different conditions on the crown forest fire initiation. The results obtained agree with the laws of physics and experimental data (Grishin [9]; Konev [13]). From an analysis of calculations and experimental data it was found that for the cases in question the minimum total incendiary heat pulse is 2600 kJ/m2 (Grishin [9]).. Calculations demonstrated

Figure 3b.

that the value of the radiant heat flux for both problems is considerably less than the convective one , therefore radiation has a weak effect on local and integral characteristics of the problem discoursed above. The results obtained agree with the
laws of physics and experimental data.

References
[1] Van Wagner, C.E., Conditions for the start and spread of crown fire. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, No.7, 1977, pp. 23-34. [2] Alexander, M.E., Crown fire thresholds in exotic pine plantations of Australasia. PhD thesis, Department of Forestry, Australian National University, 1998. [3] Van Wagner, C. E., Prediction of crown fire behavior in conifer stands. In '10th conference on fire and forest meteorology'. Ottawa, Ontario. (Eds D. C. MacIver, H. Auld and R. Whitewood), 1989, 1989, pp. 207-212. [4] Xanthopoulos, G., Development of a wildland crown fire initiation model. PhD thesis, University of Montana, 1990. [5] Rothermel, R.C., Crown fire analysis and interpretation. In 11th International conference on fire and forest meteorology. Missoula, Montana, USA, 1991. [6] Cruz, M.G. et al, Predicting crown fire behavior to support forest fire management decision-making. In 'IV International conference on forest fire research'. LusoCoimbra, Portugal. (Ed. D. X. Viegas), 11 [CD-ROM]. (Millpress) 2002. [7] Albini, F.A. et al, Modeling ignition and burning rate of large woody natural fuels. Int. Journal of Wildland fire, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1995, pp. 81-91. [8] Scott, J.H. et al, Assessing crown fire potential by linking models of surface and crown fire behavior.

Figure 4a.

Figure 4b.

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USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Fort Collins: RMRS-RP-29, (Colorado, USA) 2001. [9] Grishin, A.M., Mathematical Modeling Forest Fire and New Methods Fighting Them. Tomsk, Publishing House of Tomsk University, Russia. 1997. [10] Grishin, A.M., Perminov, V.A., Mathematical modeling of the ignition of tree crowns. Combustion, Explosion, and Shock Waves, Vol. 34, 1998, pp. 378386. [11] Perminov, V.A., Mathematical Modeling of Crown and Mass Forest Fires Initiation With the Allowance for the Radiative - Convective Heat and Mass Transfer and Two Temperatures of Medium, Ph.D Thesis, Tomsk State University, Russia, 1995. [12] Perminov, V.A., Mathematical modeling of crown forest fire initiation. In 'III International conference on forest fire research and 14th conference on fire and forest meteorology'. Luso, Portugal. (Ed. D.X.Viegas), 1998, pp. 419-431. [13] Konev, E.V., The physical foundation of vegetative materials combustion.. Novosibirsk, Nauka, Russia. 1977. [14] Morvan, D., Dupuy J.L., Modeling of fire spread through a forest fuel bed using a multiphase formulation. Combustion and Flame, Vol. 127, 2001, pp. 1981-1994. [15] Morvan, D., Dupuy J.L., Modeling the propagation of wildfire through a Mediterranean shrub using a multiphase formulation. Combustion and Flame, Vol. 138, 2004, pp. 199-210. [16] Patankar, S.V., Numerical Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow. New York: Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, 1981.

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