Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2018
Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF FLAMMABILITY EXPERIMENTS IN LITTER FUELS IN THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON
Submission Author:
Paulo Bufacchi , SP
Co-Authors:
Paulo Bufacchi, GUENTHER Krieger Filho
Presenter: Paulo Bufacchi
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2018.CIT18-0675
Abstract
Numerical simulations of flammability experiments in litter fuels in the Brazilian Amazon are used to better understand the conditions under which surface fires spread or not. This is an important issue for those working with fire management and fire behavior modeling. There is a gap that needs to be filled, regarding a numerical model that is capable of representing the flammability of vegetative fuels. Surface fires, as natural phenomena, have intrinsic high variability. To study surface fires regarding their spread / no-spread condition, two scenarios were evaluated through the use of numerical simulation softwares. The fire spread scenario was well resolved by the two softwares used, although they have different ways to represent the natural phenomena. When simulating numerically the no-spread fire, both softwares misrepresent reality. To identify the reasons that directed to a numerical spread in a no-spread scenario, numerical simulations were carried out varying the input parameters by their standard deviation. From the point of view of spread / no-spread scenarios, numerically simulated fires are more likely to not spread if spatial non-homogeneities in litter distribution are taken into account, but more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis.
Keywords
Litter, Flammability, Numerical simulation, heat release rate, parametric variation
