Instrumentation of wildland fire: Characterisation of a fire spreading through a Mediterranean shrub

Although considerable progress has been made recently in the modelling of the spreading of a forest fire, there remains a lack of reliable field measurements of thermodynamic quantities. We propose in this paper a method and a set of measuring structures built in order to improve the knowledge of the fundamental physical mechanisms that control the propagation of wildland fires. These experimental devices are designed to determine: the fire front shape, its rate of spread, the amount of energy impinging ahead of it, the vertical distribution of the temperature within the fire plume as well as the wind velocity and direction. The methodology proposed was applied to a fire spreading across the Corsican scrub on a test site. The recorded data allowed us to reconstruct the fire behaviour and provide its main properties. Wind and vegetation effects on fire behaviour were particularly addressed.