Numerical Simulation of Shrubland-Fire Spread: A Parametric Study

Project Details

• Student(s): Abdel-Razzak Tayba
• Advisor(s): Dr. Gilbert Accary
• Department: Industrial & Mechanical
• Academic Year(s): 2025-2026

Abstract

Understanding wildfire spread is essential for improving prediction capabilities and informing effective fire-management strategies. In this work, two complementary parametric studies were conducted using in-house code FireStar3D to examine the rate of spread and other key fire-behavior characteristics across both wind-driven and plume-dominated shrubland fire regimes. A total of 184 simulations were performed spanning wide ranges of wind speed and vegetation characteristics (height, packing ratio, and moisture content). For both fire-spread regimes, results show that the rate of spread scales with wind speed, and that the obtained scaling depends on a non-dimensional wildfire parameter (Byram’s convective number) that captures the combined influence of wind and fuel height and moisture. Results also show stronger dependence of the rate of spread on wind speed in plume-dominated fires, making the behavior of this fire-spread regime more unpredictable. In addition, vegetation packing ratio emerges as a significant additional driver of the rate of spread in both fire-spread regimes, indicating that Byram’s number alone cannot fully describe fire dynamics. The study also examines the initial transient phase of fire spread preceding steady fire propagation, showing that its duration (scaled by the characteristic time of the dominant heat transfer mode) also scales with Byram’s convective number. Overall, the findings advance the physical understanding of wildfire spread and support the development of improved predictive tools.