The Nature and Behaviour of Bushfires or Wildfires
Prof. John Dold
(
While many bushfires or wildfires are minor and easily
controlled, situations arise when they can get out of hand, overwhelming all
efforts to stop them and posing a major hazard to life and property. The talk will discuss some of the behaviour
of bushfires, large and small, explaining some basic notions about how they
burn and spread, and how they can be modelled.
Long accepted experimentally based notions about fire-spread have, in
some cases, only recently found a physical explanation through being modelled
suitably. A few fires have been reported
to burn in unusual ways, for example involving large flames spreading very
rapidly over bare ground. Finding
physical explanations for this as well as more normal fire behaviour can only
help towards devising more effective ways of dealing with them.
Room
E33,
MMU,
Contact:
Andrea Donafee, Tel: 07977 115 209