73th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 22, 2020 — November 24, 2020)

V0080: Understanding whirling flames

Authors

• Sriram Bharath Hariharan, University of California, Berkeley
• Xiao Zhang, University of Maryland, College Park
• Joseph Chung, University of Maryland, College Park
• Yejun Wang, Texas A\&M University, College Station
• Waruna Kulatilaka, Texas A\&M University, College Station
• Michael Gollner, University of California, Berkeley
• Elaine Oran, Texas A\&M University, College Station

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2020.GFM.V0080

Whirling flames, also known as fire whirls, are structures frequently observed in large wildland fires. Historically, they have been studied because of the danger they pose to communities and firefighters. More recently, a regime of the fire whirl, known as the blue whirl, was discovered to burn without the production of particulate matter (soot). This video discusses the experimental and numerical approaches to understanding the different regimes and the transition from the fire whirl to the blue whirl.