@article {bnh-2971, title = {Fire coalescence and mass spot fire dynamics: experimentation, modelling and simulation: Annual project report 2015-2016}, number = {171}, year = {2016}, month = {09/2016}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

This report outlines the progress of the Fire Coalescence and Mass Spot Fire Dynamics project, which is one of the projects within the Next Generation Fire Modelling cluster.
The project has now been running for approximately 15 months. The Science Plan has been finalized and the Advisory Committee has been settled. The experimental program is now up and running after a few initial delays caused by issues with sourcing adequate fuel and with development of experimental apparatus. The modelling and simulation aspects of the project have made a number of significant fire spread modelling developments and have made strong contributions to our understanding of the processes driving fire coalescence and dynamic fire spread more generally.\ In particular, the research has addressed the role that fire line geometry (especially curvature) plays in the dynamic propagation of wildfires. The project team has demonstrated that fire propagation models incorporating curvature dependence can out-perform quasi-steady (first-order) models when applied to simple wind-driven fires at both laboratory and field scales.


In addition, the research has produced a number of fundamental insights into how the shape of the fire line can affect the pyroconvective interactions between different parts of a fire. These insights have mostly been gained by targeted simulations using a coupled fire-atmosphere model.
At this stage the project has published two conference papers (one peer reviewed), and two conference posters. There are currently three journal papers submitted to international peer-reviewed journals with another one in the final stages of preparation. In addition, the project team has delivered thirteen presentations and posters to stakeholders and researchers.\ After providing some background information on the project{\textquoteright}s aims and methodology, this report provides details on the progress of the project to date. In particular this includes:

At the time of writing, the project is on schedule. The project team is confident that all milestones will be successfully delivered along with a number of unscheduled, yet significant research outputs.

}, issn = {171}, author = {Jason J. Sharples and James Hilton and Sullivan, Andrew} }