Publications
On the fluid mechanics of fires
Fluid mechanics research related to fire is reviewed with focus on canonical flows, multiphysics coupling aspects, experimental and numerical techniques. Fire is a low-speed, chemically-reacting, flow in which buoyancy plans an important role. Fire research has focused on two canonical flows, the reacting boundary-layer and the reacting free plume. There is rich, multi-lateral, bi-directional, coupling among fluid mechanics and scalar transport, combustion, and radiation. There is only a limited experimental fluid-mechanics database for fire due to measurement difficulties in the harsh environment, and the focus within the fire community on thermal/chemical consequences. Increasingly, computational fluid dynamics techniques are being used to provide engineering guidance on thermal/chemical consequences and to study fire phenomenology.