Citation

Hilton JE, Miller C, Sullivan AL. Int. J. Wildland Fire 2016; 25(9): 970-979.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, International Association of Wildland Fire, Fire Research Institute, Publisher CSIRO Publishing)

DOI

10.1071/WF15191

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Computational simulations of wildfires require a model for the two-dimensional expansion of a fire perimeter. Although many expressions exist for the one-dimensional rate of spread of a fire front, there are currently no agreed mathematical expressions for the two-dimensional outward speed of a fire perimeter. Multiple two-dimensional shapes such as elliptical and oval-shaped perimeters have been observed and reported in the literature, and several studies have attempted to classify these shapes using geometric approximations. Here we show that a two-dimensional outward speed based on a power series results in a perimeter that can match many of these observed shapes. The power series is based on the dot product between the vector normal to the perimeter and a fixed wind vector. The formulation allows the evolution and shape of a fire perimeter to be expressed using a small set of scalar coefficients. The formulation is implemented using the level set method, and computed perimeters are shown to provide a good match to perimeters of small-scale experimental fires. The method could provide a framework for statistical matching of wildfire shapes or be used to improve current wildfire prediction systems.

Language: en