A Fire Whirl: Systematic Study For Structure and Stability Analysis

• Project/Area Number: 15K12472
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Social systems engineering/Safety system
• Research Institution: Toyohashi University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: NAKAMURA Yuji 豊橋技術科学大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 准教授 (50303657)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2016)
• Budget Amount: ¥3,770,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,900,000、Indirect Cost: ¥870,000); Fiscal Year 2016: ¥1,820,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥420,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥1,950,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥450,000)
• Keywords: 火災 / 火災旋風 / 模型実験 / 相似則 / 安定性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Fire whirl appeared over L-shape fire source is investigated at various scales; one is made by large-scale wind tunnel equipped at Building Research Institute (BRI) and the other is made by small-scale wind tunnel in the lab (Scale factor is five times). It turned out that the existing scale law is not enough to predict the location of the pair of fire whirls. We found the additional scaling law to make this possible and scale model experiment is eventually established for this purpose. Through the small-scale model experiment, flow pattern around the fire whirl is visualized by laser sheet and time-evolution of fire whirl is properly captured. Further study will be continued to investigate the stability in detail.

Research Products

• [Int'l Joint Research] University of Kentucky(米国)
• [Int'l Joint Research] University of Kentucky/University of California, San Diego/US Forest Service(米国)
• [Presentation] Large-scale Wind-tunnel Experiments and Numerical Study on Moving-type Fire Whirls (2017)
  • Author(s): Saito, K., Kuwana, K., Nakamura, Y., and Sekimoto, K.
  • Organizer: 10th US National Combustion Meeting
  • Place of Presentation: Collage Park, MD
  • Year and Date: 2017-04-23
  • Int'l Joint Research
• [Presentation] Fire Whirls in Wildland Fires (2015)
  • Author(s): Salaimeh, A., Akafuah, N., Forthofer, J., Finney, M., Kuwana, K., Sekimoto, K., Nakamura, Y., and Williams, F. A.
  • Organizer: The 6th International Fire and Ecology and Management Congress: Advancing Ecology in Fire Management (6th AFE Fire Congress)
  • Place of Presentation: San Antonio, TX, USA
  • Year and Date: 2015-11-16
  • Int'l Joint Research
• [Presentation] How Well We Can Predict the Occurrence of Large Fire Whirl through Scale Model Experiment? (2015)
  • Author(s): Nakamura, Y., Shiino, K., and Nakashima, T.
  • Organizer: 12th International Conference on Flow Dynamics (ICFD2015)
  • Place of Presentation: Sendai, Japan
  • Year and Date: 2015-10-27
  • Int'l Joint Research / Invited
• [Presentation] Mobility of Fire Whirl formed over L-shape Ethanol Tray embedded in Small-scale Wind Tunnel (2015)
  • Author(s): Shiino, K., and Nakamura, Y.
  • Organizer: he 10th Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology (AOSFST-10)
  • Place of Presentation: Tsukuba, Japan
  • Year and Date: 2015-10-05
  • Int'l Joint Research
• [Remarks] 火災旋風の発生・成長メカニズムの解明
  • URL: http://www.me.tut.ac.jp/ece/fire_whirl_jp.html