Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Smoke, Fire, and Biological Heat Transfer

Master of Science, Graduate Program in Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Riverside, August 2016
Dr. Marko Princevac, Chairperson

The  present  work  documents  three  diverse  projects done  in  the  Laboratory  for Environmental Flow Modeling. They are in the following order: 1) Interception of   Smoke   from   a   Forest   Canopy,   2)   Flame   Merge   Experiment, and 3)  Examination  of  Testicular  Thermoregulation.  The  first  project  is  an experimental  investigation  of  possible  filtering  of  particulate  matter  from wildfire  smoke  dispersing  upwards  through  forest  trees  of  the  canopy  layer.  If the  filtering  is  significant,  then  it  should  be  accounted  for  when  modeling  air quality  impact,  visibility,  and  other  environmental  effects  of  surface  fires  in forests. The second project is an experimental investigation of the processes of flame  merging  and  tilting  with  no  wind  velocity.  It  was  determined  that  the flame  distance,  fuel  mass,  flame  size,  and  fuel  bed  configuration  are  the parameters that influence when the flame will “see” the other flame or obstacle. The  third  project  is  to  further  knowledge  of  thermoregulation  processes  of  the testicle  by  examining  the  influence  of  cell  metabolism  and  perfusion  in  tissue through   numerical   simulation.   Detailed   modeling   of   temperature   field development  inside  the  isolated  and  non-isolated  testicle  show  negligible influence.