Comparison between Semi empirical and Physical model in Predicting Lab-Scale Fire Rate of Spread

The rate of spread of fire (ROS) propagating across lab-scale domains has been evaluated through a semi-empirical and a physics based model designed to simulate fire propagation in forest environments. The study put in evidence the ability of the two models to provide reliable values of ROS under the effect of domain slope through the comparison with experimental findings from the literature. The practical use of the two models has been discussed highlighting the different input data and operating approaches that must be used to perform a simulation. In particular, beside the physical specifics of the vegetative fuel (load, density, moisture content and surface to volume ratio), results indicated that also the parameters which module the fuel degradation processes play an important role