Self-inducing fires: The heat source effect

Abstract

Scholars and scientists have been trying to find ways to control and alleviate the consequences of concurrent fires such as forest fires, building fires and various space fires but no compelling solutions have been concluded from their studies so far. The basic cause of these kind of fires concerns with the unstable nature of the flames and marked unpredictability associated with it. For example, the breakout of one of the deadliest wildfires in California in 2018 and the Amazon fire of 2019 shows us the gravity of the situation and also the immediate requirement to control such mishaps to save lives and properties valuable to us. This led us to make an attempt to study the behavior of such flames - an experimental setup with rather ideal conditions was devised and a thorough home-scale study was carried out. This present study mainly concerns with the study of fire propagation phenomena and the vitality of fire control in our daily life. This study involves the review of the varying regression rates and fire spread rates of flames as observed in matchsticks when spaced in both linear and non-linear orientation for different configurations. The behavioral instability of the flames will give us an insight into the heterogeneous fire propagation phenomenon and its control. An insight into the heterogeneous fire propagation is expected for essential fire safety and, on its basis, an algorithm for the same is to be formulated. With this knowledge along with the existing information, it might help us quantify the extent of fire propagation by means of a non-dimensional entity which might as well give us some possible solution to the reduction of such kind of fires in forests, buildings, large scale fires in industries, space propulsion systems.