McDonald, Nicholas;
Harris, Samuel;
(2025)
Modelling wildfire spread and spotfire merger using conformal mapping and AAA-least squares methods.
Environmental Modelling & Software
, 185
, Article 106303. 10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106303.
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Abstract
A two-dimensional model of wildfire spread and merger is presented. Three features affect the wildfire propagation: (i) a constant basic rate of spread term accounting for radiative and convective heat transfer, (ii) the unidirectional, constant ambient wind, and (iii) a fire-induced pyrogenic wind. Two numerical methods are proposed to solve for the pyrogenic potential. The first utilises the conformal invariance of Laplace’s equation, reducing the wildfire system to a single Polubarinova–Galin type equation. The second method uses a AAA-least squares method to find a rational approximation of the pyrogenic potential. Various wildfire scenarios are presented and the effects of the pyrogenic wind and the radiative/convective basic rate of spread terms investigated. Firebreaks such as roads and lakes are also included and solutions are found to match well with existing numerical and experimental results. The methods proposed in this work are suitably fast and new to the field of wildfire modelling.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Modelling wildfire spread and spotfire merger using conformal mapping and AAA-least squares methods |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106303 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2024.106303 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Wildfire modelling, Free boundary problems, Fluid dynamics, Conformal mapping, AAA-least squares algorithm, Fire spread |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Mathematics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10201609 |
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