Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A series of real scale fire experiments were performed to determine the mass and size distribution of firebrands generated from Korean Pine (pinus koraiensis) trees. The experiments were performed at the Building Research Institute (BRI) in Tsukuba, Japan. The tree height was fixed and tree moisture content was varied to examine the influence that this parameter has on the mass and size distribution of the firebrands that are produced, under ambient wind conditions. The firebrands were collected using an array of water filled pans. This ensured that firebrands would be quenched as soon as they made contact with the pans. The Korean Pine trees were also mounted on load cells during burning to determine the temporally resolved mass loss profiles. The mass loss data were used to calculate the mass loss rate and infer peak heat release rate (HRR). Results of this study are presented and compared to firebrand distribution and HRR of burning Douglas-Fir trees, a conifer tree species indigenous to the USA.