ON THE RATE OF SPREAD FOR SOME REACTION-DIFFUSION MODELS OF FOREST FIRE PROPAGATION

Abstract

A model of forest fire propagation, including drying, pyrolysis, heat convection, heat conduction, and radiative transfer, is presented. This model has been obtained by asymptotic expansion and has the generic form of a system of reaction-diffusion equations. One of the aims of the present work is to link this type of reaction diffusion models to models that rely on the concept of rate of spread. The rate of spread is defined as the solution to a nonlinear eigenvalue problem. The solution to this eigenvalue problem is obtained as a perturbation expansion in the thermal conductivity of the solid phase. The calculated rates of spread for two flame models compare favorably to experimental values.

This research has been done under the support of the European Community, research contract “SPREAD” no. EVG1-CT-2001–00043.