Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WILDLAND FIRE
Volume 25, Issue 4, Pages 456-465Publisher
CSIRO PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.1071/WF15103
Keywords
fire behaviour; horizontal front; lateral; peat fire; peatland; propagation dynamics
Categories
Funding
- School of Mechanical Engineering at University College Dublin
- Higher Education Authority (HEA)
- European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
- European Research Council [ERC-2013-StG-335891-ECOFLAM]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The consumption of large areas of peat during wildfires is due to self-sustained smouldering fronts that can remain active for weeks. We studied the effect of peat moisture content and bulk density on the horizontal propagation of smouldering fire in laboratory-scale experiments. We used milled peat with moisture contents between 25 and 250% (mass of water per mass of dry peat) and bulk densities between 50 and 150kg m(-3). An infrared camera monitored ignition, spread and extinction of each smouldering combustion front. Peats with a bulk density below 75kg m(-3) and a moisture content below 150% self-sustained smouldering propagation for more than 12cm. Peat with a bulk density of 150kg m(-3) could self-sustain smouldering propagation up to a critical moisture content of 115%. A linear model estimated that increasing both moisture content and bulk density significantly reduced the median fire spread rate (which ranged between 1 and 5cm h(-1)). Moisture content had a stronger effect size on the spread rate than bulk density. However, the effect of bulk density on spread rate depends upon the moisture content, with the largest effect of bulk density at low moisture contents.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available