Fuel loads in real-world fire scenarios often feature discrete elements, discontinuities, or inhomogeneities; however, most models for flame spread only assume a continuous, homogeneous fuel. Because discrete fuels represent a realistic scenario not yet well-modeled, it is of interest to find simple methods to model fire growth first in simple, laboratory-scale configurations. A detailed experimental and theoretical study was therefore performed to investigate the controlling mechanisms of flame spread through arrays of wooden dowels, with dowel spacings of 0.75, 0.875, and 1.5 cm. Flames were found to spread vertically for all spacings; however, for the 1.5 cm spacing, the gap was too large for horizontal flame spread to occur. A radiation-controlled model for horizontal flame spread was developed that predicted the horizontal flame spread rate through various arrays of dowels. Combined with an existing convection-based model for vertical flame spread, both horizontal and vertical flame spread was modeled to predict the number of burning wooden dowels as a function of time. Using models for the burning rate of wooden dowels and boundary-layer theory, a global burning rate model was developed that provided reasonable agreement with experimental results.

实际火灾场景中的燃料负载通常具有离散的元素，不连续性或不均匀性；但是，大多数火焰扩散模型仅假设使用连续的均质燃料。由于离散燃料代表的是尚未建模的现实情况，因此有兴趣找到首先以简单的实验室规模配置对火势增长进行建模的简单方法。因此，进行了详细的实验和理论研究，以研究火焰在阵列销钉间距为0.75、0.875和1.5 cm的木质销钉阵列中的蔓延控制机制。发现火焰在所有间距下均垂直扩散。但是，对于1.5 cm的间距，该间隙太大，无法发生水平火焰蔓延。建立了水平火焰蔓延的辐射控制模型，该模型通过各种销钉预测了水平火焰蔓延的速率。结合现有的基于对流的垂直火焰传播模型，对水平和垂直火焰传播进行建模，以预测燃烧的木销数量随时间的变化。利用木销钉的燃烧速率模型和边界层理论，建立了一个全局燃烧速率模型，该模型与实验结果具有合理的一致性。