Section B Fire and Explosion - A Study of Flame Spread in Engineered Cardboard Fuel Beds Part II: Scaling Law Approach

In this second part of a two-part exploration into the dynamic behavior observed in wildland fires, time scales differentiating convective and radiative heat transfer are further explored. Scaling laws for the two different types of heat transfer were considered: radiation-driven fire spread and convection-driven fire spread, which can both occur during wildland fires. A new interpretation of the inertial forces introduced a downstream, time-dependent frequency ω, which captures the dynamic, vortex shedding behavior of flames due to the unstable nature of the turbulent flow created in the wake of the fire. Excelsior and paper strip experiments suggest many wildland fire scenarios fall into the convection-driven spread regime.