Understanding whirling flames
Sriram Bharath Hariharan, University of California, Berkeley
Xiao Zhang, University of Maryland, College Park
Joseph Chung, University of Maryland, College Park
Yejun Wang, Texas A\&M University, College Station
Waruna Kulatilaka, Texas A\&M University, College Station
Michael Gollner, University of California, Berkeley
Elaine Oran, Texas A\&M University, College Station
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2020.GFM.V0080
Whirling flames, also known as fire whirls, are structures frequently observed in large wildland fires. Historically, they have been studied because of the danger they pose to communities and firefighters. More recently, a regime of the fire whirl, known as the blue whirl, was discovered to burn without the production of particulate matter (soot). This video discusses the experimental and numerical approaches to understanding the different regimes and the transition from the fire whirl to the blue whirl.
See other videos from the 2020 Gallery of Fluid Motion: https://gfm.aps.org/