Open Access

ARTICLE

Using Image Processing Technology and General Fluid Mechanics Principles to Model Smoke Diffusion in Forest Fires

Liying Zhu^*, Ang Wang, Fang Jin

Institute of Civil Engineering, Huanghe S&T University, Zhengzhou, 450063, China

* Corresponding Author: Liying Zhu. Email:

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: EFD and Heat Transfer III)

Fluid Dynamics & Materials Processing 2021, 17(6), 1213-1222. https://doi.org/10.32604/fdmp.2021.017572

Received 20 May 2021; Accepted 26 July 2021; Issue published 08 September 2021

Abstract

In the present study, the laws of smoke diffusion during forest fires are determined using the general principles of fluid mechanics and dedicated data obtained experimentally using an “ad hoc” imaging technology. Experimental images mimicking smoke in a real scenario are used to extract some “statistics”. These in turn are used to obtain the “divergence” of the flow (this fluid-dynamic parameter describing the amount of air that converges to a certain place from the surroundings or vice versa). The results show that the divergence of the smoke depends on the outside airflow and finally tends to zero as time passes. Most remarkably, compared with clouds and fog, smoke has a unique dynamic time-evolution curve. The present study demonstrates that as long as image processing technology and intelligent monitoring technology are used to monitor the gas flow in a forest, the occurrence of forest fires can be quickly diagnosed.

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Keywords

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