Firespread through fuel beds: Modeling of wind-aided fires and induced hydrodynamics

The propagation of wind-aided line fires through fuel beds is simulated by using a multiphase approach. In this approach, a gas phase flows through N solid phases which constitute an idealized reproduction of the heterogeneous combustible medium. A set of time-dependent equations is obtained for each phase and the coupling between the gas phase and the solid phases is rendered through exchange terms of mass, momentum, and energy. Turbulence is approached by using a RNG $\mathrm{k-\epsilon }$ statistical model constructed from the Favre averaging method. The radiative transfer equation extended to multiphase media is solved using the discrete ordinates method (DOM). Soot formation is taken into account for the evaluation of the absorption coefficient of the soot/fuel particles/combustion products mixture using the gray gas assumption. First-order kinetics is incorporated to describe water vaporization, pyrolysis, and char combustion processes. The solution is performed numerically by a finite-volume method including a high-order upwind convective scheme and a flux limiter strategy along with a projection method for the pressure–velocity coupling. This model has been applied to describe the unsteady behavior of wind-aided fires spreading through a litter of dead pine needles and the induced hydrodynamics. The numerical results obtained from our model are presented and compared to measurements and predictions from other laboratory-based models.