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Acoustical Extinction of Flame on Moving Firebrand for the Fire Protection in Wildland–Urban Interface

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Abstract

Firebrands are a widely observed phenomenon in wildland fires, which can transport for a long distance, cause spot ignition in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) and increase the rate of wildfire spread. The flame attached to a moving firebrand behaves as a potential pilot source for ignition, so extinguishing such a flame in the process of moving can effectively minimize its fire hazard. In this work, firebrands were represented by a dry wood ball with a diameter of 20 mm and a weight of 2.9 g, which carried a flame with the heat release rate of 250 W. The firebrand was held by a pendulum system to adjust the velocity. Results showed that there is a minimum sound pressure to extinguish the firebrand flame, which increases slightly with the sound frequency. As the firebrand velocity increases from 0 m/s to 4.2 m/s, the minimum sound pressure for extinction decreases significantly from 114 dB to 90 dB. The cumulative effect of firebrand motion and acoustic oscillation was found to facilitate flame extinction. A characteristic Damköhler number (~ 1), with the ratio of the fuel residence time to the flame chemical time, is used to quantify the extinction limit of the flaming firebrand. This work provides a potential technical solution to mitigate the hazard of firebrand flame and spotting ignition in WUI and helps understand the influence of acoustic waves on the flame stability on the solid fuel.

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Acknowledgements

This study received financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52006185, 51876183), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFB1501405), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (1-BE04), PolyU Emerging Frontier Area (EFA) Scheme of RISUD (P0013879), and ZJU SKLCEU Open Fund (ZJUCEU2018012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, Department of Building Services Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Caiyi Xiong, Yanhui Liu, Cangsu Xu & Xinyan Huang

  2. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China

    Caiyi Xiong

  3. College of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Cangsu Xu

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  1. Caiyi Xiong
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  2. Yanhui Liu
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Correspondence to Cangsu Xu or Xinyan Huang.

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Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary Video 1 Stationary firebrand flame in acoustic Wave (AVI 13647 kb)

Supplementary Video 2 Extinction of stationary firebrand flame (AVI 15869 kb)

Supplementary Video 3 Moving flaming firebrand without sound (AVI 6388 kb)

Supplementary Video 4 Moving flaming firebrand with 90 dB sound (AVI 5647 kb)

Supplementary Video 5 Extinction of a moving flaming firebrand (AVI 6388 kb)

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Xiong, C., Liu, Y., Xu, C. et al. Acoustical Extinction of Flame on Moving Firebrand for the Fire Protection in Wildland–Urban Interface. Fire Technol 57, 1365–1380 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-020-01059-w

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