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Eruptive Behaviour of Forest Fires

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Abstract

A critical review of the mechanisms that are described in the literature to explain the onset and development of eruption or blow up in forest fires is presented, given their great relevance for fire safety, particularly in canyons. The various processes described in the literature that are considered as potential causes of fire eruption are discussed. Some of them seem more likely to cause the phenomenon and the others seem to have a complementary role in some conditions. The current review highlights that more research is required to create a classification of Fire Eruption types and to allow the development of specific Fire Safety procedures for fire fighters to minimize accidents.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank to the Editor of Fire Technology for the invitation to propose this review article. The first author is grateful to his colleagues L. Pita, C. Rossa, L. Ribeiro and A. Figueiredo for their collaboration in the performance of the experiments that contributed to the development of the mathematical model for eruptive fires. The support provided by the Portuguese Science Foundation to this research under project SPOTFIRE (PTDC/EME-MFE/73765/2006) is also gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ADAI, Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    D. X. Viegas

  2. Fire Protection Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

    A. Simeoni

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  1. D. X. Viegas
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  2. A. Simeoni
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Correspondence to D. X. Viegas.

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Viegas, D.X., Simeoni, A. Eruptive Behaviour of Forest Fires. Fire Technol 47, 303–320 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-010-0193-6

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