Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

The Role of Fuel Characteristics and Heat Release Formulations in Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation

Kasra Shamsaei
ORCID logo ,
Timothy W. Juliano
ORCID logo ,
Matthew Roberts
ORCID logo ,
Hamed Ebrahimian
* ORCID logo ,
Neil P. Lareau
,
Eric Rowell
,
Branko Kosovic
ORCID logo
Version 1 : Received: 22 May 2023 / Approved: 24 May 2023 / Online: 24 May 2023 (02:47:23 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Shamsaei, K.; Juliano, T.W.; Roberts, M.; Ebrahimian, H.; Lareau, N.P.; Rowell, E.; Kosovic, B. The Role of Fuel Characteristics and Heat Release Formulations in Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation. Fire 2023, 6, 264. Shamsaei, K.; Juliano, T.W.; Roberts, M.; Ebrahimian, H.; Lareau, N.P.; Rowell, E.; Kosovic, B. The Role of Fuel Characteristics and Heat Release Formulations in Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation. Fire 2023, 6, 264.

Abstract

In this study, we focus on the effects of fuel bed representation and fire heat and smoke distribution in a coupled fire-atmosphere simulation platform for two landscape-scale fires: the 2018 Camp Fire and the 2021 Caldor Fire. The fuel bed representation in the coupled fire-atmosphere simulation platform WRF-Fire currently includes only surface fuels. Thus, we enhance the model by adding canopy fuel characteristics and heat release, for which a method to calculate the heat generated from canopy fuel consumption is developed and implemented in WRF-Fire. Furthermore, the current WRF-Fire heat and smoke distribution in the atmosphere is replaced with a heat-conserving Truncated Gaussian (TG) function and its effects are evaluated. The simulated fire perimeters of case studies are validated against semi-continuous, high-resolution fire perimeters derived from NEXRAD radar observations. Furthermore, simulated plumes of the two fire cases are compared to NEXRAD radar reflectivity observations followed by buoyancy analysis using simulated temperature and vertical velocity fields. The results show that while the improved fuel bed and the TG heat release scheme have small effects on the simulated fire perimeters of the wind-driven Camp Fire, they affect the propagation direction of the plume-driven Caldor Fire, leading to better-matching fire perimeters with the observations. However, the improved fuel bed representation together with the TG heat smoke release scheme leads to more realistic plume structure in comparison to the observations in both fires. The buoyancy analysis also depicts more realistic fire-induced temperature anomalies and atmospheric circulation when the fuel bed is improved.

Keywords

WRF-Fire, Canopy; Crown Fire; Coupled Fire-Atmosphere Simulation; Mass Loss; Burning Rate; Caldor Fire; Camp Fire; Heat Distribution; NEXRAD

Subject

Engineering, Other

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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