Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Byram, Clements, Elliot and George have reported experiments on the effect of a wind on the rate of spread of fire through cribs of wood and from their data it is shown here that the rate of spread normal to the deflected flames is the same as in still air. This is interpreted as being the result of the inclination of the fire front in the fuel bed being roughly the same as that of the flames, ie the fire is driven by radiation from the solid surfaces in the burning zone. The note also discusses briefly some general topics of the effect of wind on the fire spread.