Duration: about 30 minutes

Abstract :
This presentation will be divided into two parts: (1) the Portuguese Centre for Forest Fires Studies� CEIF/ADAI and (2) spot fires.

CEIF/ADAI dedicates to the research on forest fires. Its main objective is the promotion of scientific knowledge of the phenomena related to forest fire occurrence and spread through the development of research projects and advanced training activities, as well as with the participation in pilot projects and cooperation actions involving operational institutions. CEIF/ADAI owns one of the most important European laboratories dedicated to forest fires, where the major part of the investigation of CEIF is developed. In this first part of the presentation, the main facilities and equipment of this laboratory will be showed and described.

Spot fires are a very important mechanism of forest fire spread. The importance of spot fires in Portugal have been increasing in the same way of the representativeness of eucalyptus stands in Portugal, as this is one of the species that causes more spotting problems. The studies of spot fires developed by CEIF/ADAI have divided this mechanism in four stages: (1) the release of a firebrand, (2) its uplift in the convection column, (3) the downwind transport of the firebrand, and (4) the landing of the firebrand in a fuel bed. This part of the presentation will be focus on a model developed to determine the distance of downwind
transport of a hollow cylindrical bark of eucalyptus and on the probability of ignition of a fuel bed by several types of firebrands.


2. CV Résumé (Jorge Rafael Nogueira Raposo) Jorge Rafael Nogueira Raposo concluded the Masters in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, in 2011 in the field of Energy and Environment with the thesis named “Study of the Interaction of Fire Fronts in Forest Fires”. Frequents the Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering - Natural and Technological Hazards, at the University of Coimbra.  Work in the area of Engineering, with emphasis in study of the Jump-Fires. In
this moment have a Ph.D. budget from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology to develop a study about Jump-Fires named “Extreme Fire Behaviour Associated to Merging of Two Linear Fire Fronts” . In Research Program of ADAI/CEIF also work in the fields of fire spread, extreme fire behaviour, converging fronts, modeling of fire behaviour, spot-fires, crown-fires and fire safety. In his research have collaboration with the University of New South Wales (Australia), University of Sassari (Italy), Technical University of Munich (Germany) among others.  Jorge Raposo has 2 articles published in journals and 4
papers in proceedings of events.

Title: EXTREME FIRE BEHAVIOUR ASSOCIATED TO MERGING OF TWO LINEAR FIRE
FRONTS
Jorge Rafael Nogueira Raposo
ADAI/LAETA, University of Coimbra, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Rua Pedro Hispano, 3030-001 Coimbra, Portugal
e-mail: jorge.raposo@dem.uc.pt
Key words: Jump fire, Extreme fire behavior, Forest fires

Abstract:
This presentation focuses on the study of interaction between two fire fronts that intersect in a single point and make a small angle (?oi) between them. Quite often forest fires or fire suppression techniques in which prescribed burning is used, could cause interaction effects between fire fronts, which may compromise the capability to control the fire and create a situation liable to trap the lives of the people that face this phenomenon

The laboratorial experiments carried out show a patterned propagation of fire that is different from what is obtained in propagation of single fire fronts or point ignition. The explanation found is that this kind of geometric configuration creates an amount of energy in the intersection point, which induces an extremely high propagation speed of the intersection point due to heat transfer processes by radiation and convection this phenomena is called “Jump-Fire”.

In this study of the Jump-Fire the parameters as the initial angle between the fire fronts (?o), the angle of the slope (α) and the type of forest fuel on the behaviour of propagation of this type of fire it is pursues.

It is presented techniques and methodologies adopted to try achieve the physical explanation of this phenomenon of extreme fire behaviour and comparison between techniques it was made to standardized new processes of measurement used the archive the explanation of the Jump-Fire.

火灾科学国家重点实验室
2013.12.9