Title: EXTREME FIRE BEHAVIOUR ASSOCIATED TO MERGING OF TWO LINEAR FIRE FRONTS
Speaker: Dr. Jorge Rafael Nogueira Raposo

From: University of Coimbra
Date: Dec. 10, 2013
CV of the Speaker:

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.
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.