Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Measurements have been made during some controlled fires in gorse. These have included the rate of fire spread and the heat transfer to a radiometer and to cans of water in the path of the advancing fire. The heat transfer rates agree closely with values obtained in the laboratory for wood cribs and the rates of spread are only slightly less than those calculated from the bulk density of the fuel using relations derived from laboratory experiments. Flame lengths are in good agreement with an extrapolation of laboratory data but flame deflections are not. Nevertheless it is thought that the basic mechanism controlling fire spread in deep cribs, i.e. the heating of unburned fuel by radiation through the fuel bed, is the same for these fires in gorse, though there may be some contribution from the flames above the fuel bed.