Measurement of Fluctuating Temperatures in a Continuous

Flame Spreading Across a Fuel Bed Using a Double

Thermocouple Probe
PAUL-ANTOINE SANTONI,* THIERRY MARCELLI, and ERIC LEONI

SPE-CNRS UMR 6134, Campus Grossetti, Universite de Corse, B.P. 52, 20250 Corte, Corse, France
Although the modeling of the spread of a forest fire has made considerable progress recently, there remains a
lack of reliable measurements of such fluctuating scalar quantities as temperature for the validation of the
different existing models. This led us to use double thermocouples to measure fluctuating temperatures in the
continuous flame region of a fire plume. An enthalpy balance to model the temperature of a thermocouplejunction immersed in a flame was written. Then a linearized first-order model was derived and a method for
identifying the models parameters, i.e., the time constant and gain coefficient, was provided. This model was
tested with a clean, diffusion flame of ethanol to compensate for the gas temperature. These measurements
agree with the model for the temperature of a thermocouples hot junction. Finally, the compensated gas
temperature for the turbulent flame of a fire spreading across a bed of pine needles was investigated. 2002
by The Combustion Institute

NOMENCLATURE
C
d
G
h
m
N
Nu
q
s2
t
T

specific heat
diameter of hot junction of a
thermocouple
time-derivative of temperature
heat transfert coefficient
time average of the difference
2T g2 1T g1
sample of size N
Nusselt number
heat flux
variance
time
temperature

Greek Symbols

parameter defined in Eq. 25

parameter defined in Eq. 23
gain coefficient
emissivity
linearization parameter
linearization function
density
Stefan-Boltzmann constant
time constant
phase in the sinusoidal gas
temperature
angular frequency in the sinusoidally
varying gas temperature

*Corresponding author. E-mail: santoni@univ-corse.fr

COMBUSTION AND FLAME 131:4758 (2002)
2002 by The Combustion Institute
Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

t
T21
T

time interval
temperature difference (T th 2
T th 1)
temperature range around mean
temperature

Subscripts
1, 2
conv
g
j
p
rad, abs
rad, lost
th

thermocouple 1, 2
convection
gas
thermocouple j
constant pressure
absorbed by radiation
lost by radiation
thermocouple
time average

INTRODUCTION
Modeling the spread of a forest-fire has generated an abundant and miscellaneous literature.
According to the Webers classification [1], one
can define three kinds of model. These are
statistical models, which take no account of
physical mechanisms [2], empirical models,
which are based only on the conservation of
energy and do not distinguish between the
mode of heat transfer [3, 4] and physical models
[5, 6]. These last models do differentiate between the various modes of heat transfer, when
predicting the fires behavior. Among these,
0010-2180/02/$see front matter
PII S0010-2180(02)00391-7

48
multiphase modeling [7, 8] represents the most
complete approach developed so far: a set of
time-dependent equations for the gas phase and
a few solid phases constitute an idealized reproduction of a heterogeneous combustible medium. The coupling between the gaseous and
solid phases is expressed through exchanges in
terms of mass, momentum, and energy. In addition, turbulence as well as radiation and kinetics are used to describe pyrolysis and combustion. This approach has been tested against
experiments with fires spreading across pine
needles on the laboratory-scale. The only measurements available for comparison were coarse
observations of the visible flame length or rate
of spread. However, time-averaged values of
temperature were not considered. Indeed, it is
particularly difficult to achieve reliable and accurate measurements of fluctuating temperatures for a fire spreading across pine needles,
particularly in the continuous flame region in
the vicinity of the bed of needles. Thus, there is
a lack of measurements of the turbulence of
flames in forest-fires, so the multiphase approach has not been tested fully. Such a model
has been used recently as a tool to develop a
simplified model of fire-spread, less expensive in
computational time [9]. Thus the multiphase
model needs testing. Before doing so a reliable
and robust experimental procedure has to be
developed to measure the temperatures in the
fire spreading across a bed of pine needles.
The flames encountered in freely burning
forest-fires are typical diffusion flames, in which
three regions of behavior can be identified. As
in other free unbounded fire plumes one can
distinguish [10, 11] a region of continuous flame
close to the source of the fire (here the burning
needles). Over that region there are intermittent balls of flame detached from their source;
finally the third region is the conventional thermal plume. In fires from pine needles, the fuel
pyrolyses mainly as a result of radiative feedback to the fuels surface from the flame under
no slope and without any wind. This radiation
mostly comes from the continuous region of the
flame. Thus, knowing the temperature in this
region is important for validating existing models. This paper provides a method using a
double thermocouple probe technique for reconstructing the fluctuations in temperature in

P.-A. SANTONI ET AL.

the continuous flame region for a fire spreading
across a fuel-bed. The difficulty encountered in
combustion is that the temperatures of the
thermocouple and the gas surrounding it are not
equal. However, because of its strength, a thermocouple remains the most appropriate probe
measuring temperatures. The present technique, although restricted to an experiment
carried out at laboratory scale for fire spreading
over a small device (0.6 m2), could be applied to
larger scale and actual fires.
One difficulty encountered when using thermocouples is the determination of their time
constants, which depend on the wires used, as
well as on the medium into which they are
introduced [12, 13]. Thus, conventional techniques for measuring mean time constants, such
as the electric heating method [14] are not
convenient for unsteady combustion processes.
An alternative method [15] uses the crosspower spectra of the temperatures measured by
two thermocouples of different diameters to
identify the mean time constants. Then, a new
scheme to calculate the instantaneous time constants of such thermocouples was proposed [16].
This approach assumes that the ratio of the time
constants is constant. The procedure was extended by Vachon et al. [17], taking into account the radiative exchanges between the thermocouple and the soot as well as the
surroundings. However, the constancy of the
ratio of time constants was not confirmed by
Tagawa and Ohta [18], who have proposed
another way of identifying time constants. The
advantage of their work lies in the fact that the
thermocouples mean and fluctuating time constants, as well as compensated temperatures
were obtained without knowing a priori the
ratio of the time constants of the two thermocouples and without assuming it to be constant
over time. The time constant depends on the
properties of the flow over the thermocouples,
so the measurements fluctuate. Because of the
region of flame observed in our case, the radiation received by the thermocouples from the
gas around them should not be neglected, as
before [18]. Therefore, a totally new model of
the behavior of the thermocouples temperature
is developed below. This is a first-order model
obtained by linearizing a thermal balance for a
spherical beaded thermocouple immersed in a

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT IN A SPREADING FIRE

continuous flame zone. The model requires one
to identify not only the thermocouples time
constants, but also their fluctuating gain-coefficients. A method was developed to identify
these parameters and was tested using two
different fuels. A clean ethanol flame was used
to compensate for the temperature of the continuous flame region. Then the reconstruction
method was applied to a flame spreading across
a bed of pine needles.

49

Fig. 1. Experimental device for the ethanol flame.

Experimental Devices

along their sheath without this protection and may

well have altered the measurements. The thermocouples beads were cleaned after each run. The
supporting rod was used with both fuels: ethanol
and pine needles. The effects of the support on
the hydrodynamic, and hence also on the recorded temperature were assumed negligible. The
arrangement in Fig. 1 was built to investigate the
temperature in the plume, but most measurements were of the compensated temperature in
the continuous flame region.
For the fires from pine needles, the apparatus
is shown in Fig. 2; it was composed of a syporex
plate (1.2m long and 0.5m wide) protected by
sand, on which was a bed of pure oven-dried
pine needles. These were spread as evenly as
possible on a portion (0.7-m long and 0.4-m
width) of the total area of the combustion table
to give a homogeneous structure, representative
of a typical layer found in Corsican forests with
a load of 0.5 kg/m2 on a dry basis. The syporex
plate was further supported by a larger table
(1.5-m long and 1-m wide) to allow lateral
inflow of air. The experiments were performed to

In the first experiments, a cupel (diam. 60 mm,

depth 8.5 mm, and wall thickness 1.5 mm) was
filled with 0.95 g of pure ethanol (9596 vol%).
The cupel was placed on a large bench which
allowed lateral inflows of air. Figure 1 shows the
setup, including a tree of 5 thermocouple-probes,
each probe composed of a two hole insulator
made of recrystallized pure alumina ceramic containing over 99.8% Al2O3. The insulators were
28.5 cm long (o.d. 3.1 mm; i.d. 1 mm). The
thermocouples, described below, were threaded
through these holes and their junctions were set at
a distance of 0.3 mm from each other. Those
insulators protected the thermocouples stainless
steel sheaths. The flame could warm the sensors

Fig. 2. Experimental apparatus for fire spread across pine

needles.

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURES
Two kinds of measurement were conducted.
The first was of the temperature in the continuous region of a clean diffusion flame of ethanol. Indeed, such a flame possesses interesting
properties, described below when testing the
reconstruction of the gas temperature. The second set of experiments compensated for the
temperature of the continuous flame region for
a fire spreading across pine needles. Experimental fires were conducted for both fuels in a
closed room in still air in early autumn (August)
to bring the runs on pine needle litters consistent with actual fire conditions. Most important
forest fires occur in Corsica in the hottest
season. Smoke was removed from the room
after each test. The properties of the ambient
air were measured for each test; the temperature ranged between 25 to 30C and the relative
humidity varied from 40 to 50%.

50
observe the spread of a fire under no slope and
without any wind for line-ignition fires. For
these, a line was ignited using alcohol at one small
edge of the fuel-bed, as shown in Fig. 2. The array
of double thermocouple probes was installed
above the fuel at 0.35 m before its end, that is,
far enough from the ignition line for a fire to
achieve both a stable spread-rate and flame shape,
before it passed through the thermocouples. The
stable shape of the flame was verified with an
infra-red video camera and the constant spreadrate was confirmed using the temperatures recorded by five double thermocouple probes located on the surface of the litter and spaced 0.1 m
apart along its main axis as shown in Fig. 2.
Fuel Bed
The fuel was dead needles of Pinus pinaster. Their
ratio of area to volume and density were 4550 m1
and 680 kg/m3, respectively. The depth of fuel was
2.3 cm, giving a bulk density of 21.74 kg/m3 and
a packing ratio of 0.032. The experiments used a
fuel with a fixed moisture content, thus, requiring
the needles to be first dried in an oven at 60C for
24 h. They were not completely dehydrated for
every experiments because they partially rehydrated during their removal from the oven and
the ignition. Thus, a sample of needles was
taken for every run and loaded to evaluate the
moisture content of the fuel before the burning.
It was found that the needles were conditioned
to a moisture content of 1 to 3%.
Instruments
The thermocouples used in these experiments
were mineral-insulated integrally metal-sheathed
(MIMS) prewelded type K (chromel-alumel)
pairs of wire with an exposed junction. The MIMS
form of thermocouple consisted of matched thermocouple wires surrounded by insulating material
(MgO) compacted by rolling until the stainless
steel sheath was reduced in diameter. The exposed junction protruded beyond the protective
metallic sheath to give accurate fast response. The
double thermocouple probe consisted of two
30-cm long sensors with sheaths 250 and 500 m
in diameter for both thin and thick thermocouples. At the exposed hot junctions the wires were
50 and 100 m in diameter, respectively. More-

P.-A. SANTONI ET AL.

over, the exposed junctions were nearly perfect
spheres, whose diameters were 163 m and 349
m, respectively. These diameters for the wires
were chosen since they constituted a compromise
between their robustness and their rapidity (low
time constant). The method developed was intended to be used in actual fires, where thinner
wires are not appropriate, because of their fragility, as pointed out by others [19]. Furthermore, the
size of the wires adopted here limit the sagging of
the junction because of the thermocouples expanding. This prevented us from using other supports [20] which are inappropriate for actual forest fires. The thermocouples were connected to a
Hewlett Packard (HP E9811B) data logger, which
is a programmable unit. It possesses an on-board
digital signal processor, which converts the voltage
read across the analog input channel and applies a
high speed conversion, which produces measurements of temperature. The sampling frequency
varied from 1.6 to 2 kHz, depending on the
numbers of thermocouples used; the precision of
a measured temperature was 0.5C. To verify the
stable shape of a flame traveling across the thermocouple-tree, a Cedip infrared focal plane array
camera (operating at MWIR wavelengths) was
used with an appropriate CO2 filter (4.2 m).

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODEL

Non-Linear Model
The instantaneous heat balance for the bead of
a thermocouple immersed in a continuous flame
region was written assuming the following:

The bead was spherical and homogeneous,

Catalytic heating was negligible,
Conduction of heat along the wires was negligible. The ratio of the thermocouples length
to diameter was 150 to 300. This reduces
conductive cooling, which could be important
if the wires were too short [19],
Convective heat flux is modeled by using
q conv hT th T g.

(1)

However, it should be noticed that although

correlations exist to evaluate h from Nu, they
are only valid for particular cases. No correlation exists to determine h in high-temperature

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT IN A SPREADING FIRE

turbulent reactive flows like those occurring in

forest fires,

be defined for each large variation of T th . This

gives:

The bead behaves like a grey body, so the

heat flux lost by radiation is given by

4
T g4 T g3T th T g
T th

q rad,lost

51

4
th T th
,

(2)

The heat flux absorbed by the bead was

evaluated to be
q rad,abs th gT g4.

(3)

with () 1 1/ 1/2 1/3. In the

following, will be written instead of (), so
Eq. 5 becomes
6h
dT th

T T g
dt
thC pthd th th

by assuming that the region of the flame

surrounding the bead behaves like an isothermal homogeneous semi-transparent medium.
Finally, the instantaneous heat balance is

gT g4

(4)

Linearized Model
Equation 4 can be rewritten in the more appropriate form:
dT th
6h

T T g
dt
thC pthd th th
6 th
6 th1 g T g3
Tg
thC pthd th
thC pthd th

4
T th
T g4.

(5)

The last term of Eq. 5 can be linearized by

assuming that whatever the value of T g , a
parameter can be defined so that

T TT 1,
g

th

T th T g.

where dth is the beads diameter. Equation 4 shows

that the temperature recorded by a thermocouple
is not the temperature of the gas surrounding it.
In fact, this model is not useful in its present
form to reconstruct T g , because h is difficult to
estimate and g is a bulk parameter, which
cannot be identified. Nevertheless, a linear,
first-order model can be derived to reconstruct
the temperature of the gas.

6 th1 g T g3
6 th T g3
Tg
thC pthd th
thC pthd th

This can be rewritten as

6h
6 th
dT th

T T g
dt
thC pthd th th
thC pthd th
4
T th

(6)

which means that T th T g / . Obviously, T th

should not vary greatly and a parameter has to

dT th
T th T g
dt

(7)

thCp thd th
,
6h th T g3

(8)

h th 1 g T g3
.
h th T g3

(9)

with

and

This first-order linear model assumes T th

T g / , and can be used to reconstruct the temperature of the gas. It should be pointed out
that and depend on the parameter , on the
thermocouples geometry and physical properties, as well as on the gass temperature and
velocity (through h) and more especially for
on the emissivity of the gas. If there are large
fluctuations of temperature, velocity, and gas
composition, because of the intermittency in
buoyant flames, there are consequential fluctuations in h, T g , , and g and consequently also
and . This suggests that the use of mean
parameters (for and ) results in a somewhat
inaccurate temperature measurement in turbulent combustion as demonstrated before [17, 18]
for . However, as mentioned in the previous
section, the values of h, g , and are unknown
and identifying them to calculate the fluctuating
parameters and is meaningless. An alternative method is thus, proposed below to determine and directly.

52

P.-A. SANTONI ET AL.

Identification of the Time Constants

Identification of the Models Parameters

To identify the time constant 1 and 2 the variance of the difference (2Tg2 1Tg1) was minimized for a number N samples recorded by the
thermocouples during a time interval of length t.
This procedure explicitly takes into account the
fluctuations of the temperatures during the time
interval t. Thus, if m is the time average of the
difference (2Tg2 1Tg1) for N samples:

Consider two thermocouples different only in

diameter, immersed in the continuous region of
a flame, and set at a distance which ensures
firstly that the velocity and temperature fields of
the flow surrounding them are identical and secondly that there is no mutual perturbation of their
boundary layers. These conditions are necessary
for the sensors to be measuring the same temperature Tg. If Tth1 and Tth2 denote the temperatures
of the thin and thick thermocouples, respectively,
their governing equations are:

1
2

dT th1
dt
dT th2
dt

T th1 1T g1,

s2
(11)

G T
1

21

G T
1

21

s2

1
N

T
N

(12)

i
g2

1T gi 1 m 2.

(13)

i1

21

2 2

G
2

G m 2 G T
2 G T 2 G G
2m T G G .
2

21

21

1 2

21

The time constants 1 and 2 can be calculated

from the two following conditions set to minimize the functional s 2
s 2
0,
1

(14)

s 2
0.
2

(15)

After some calculations, these previous relations can be expanded into

(16)

21

1T gi 1,

1 2

21

i
g2

i1

G G T m G G ,
G G G G
m G G G T m G
.
G G G G
m

The minimization of s 2 will be managed using

N
previous notation [18]. Thus, (1/N) i1
is
abbreviated to , and new variables are defined
as T 21 T th 2 T th 1, G 1 dT th 1/dt, G 2
dT th 2/dt. Then, Eq. 13 becomes

where, the subscripts 1 and 2 have been added

to T g . In theory, T g 1 and T g 2 should be equal, but
actually this is obviously not the case. Nevertheless, two equations and five unknown quantities
1, 2, 1, 2, and T g will be assumed.
First the four parameters will be determined
before reconstructing T g ; this will be done by a
technique from Tagawa and Ohta [18], who had
the gain coefficients 1 and 2 equal to unity.
They [18] minimized the time-averaged difference between T g 1 and T g 2, that is, e
(T g 2 T g 1) 2 , using the method of least squares,
but keeping time constants constant. Thus, 1
1 and 2 2 and e was computed using the
samples of temperature recorded by the thermocouples. This approach was investigated here
to identify the parameters 1, 2, 1, and 2.
However, it turned out to be inappropriate, so
the identification was split into two steps: the
first one was for the time constants and the
second one determined the gain coefficients.

the variance is given by

(10)

T th2 2T g2,

1
N

(17)

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT IN A SPREADING FIRE

However, a problem remains because m must first
be calculated to be able to evaluate 1 and 2. To
circumvent this problem, m will be calculated by
substituting Eqs. 10 and 11 in Eq. 12, giving:
m

1
N

i1

i
dT th
2

dt

i
1
T th
2

i
dT th
1

dt

i
.
T th
1

(18)
The time constants are then evaluated by a fixed
point method, which uses random given values
for 1 and 2 as initial steps to calculate m using
Eq. 18. Then in a second step the value of m is
introduced in Eqs. 16 and 17 and new values of
1 and 2 are estimated. These two steps are
repeated until the ratios (n1
n2)/n2 and
2
n1
n
n
(1 1)/1, where n designates an iteration,
are sufficiently small, when the procedure has
converged. At this point, it should be recalled that
1 and 2 must be known to reconstruct Tg.
Identification of the Gain Coefficients
To identify 1 and 2, 1 and 2 are required.
Thus, the gain coefficients will be denoted now
by 1 and 2, so Eq. 9 may be rewritten for the
thin thermocouple as

1 1

th11 g T g3
h 1 1 th1 T g3

(19)

The subscript 1 for was added for consistency.

Indeed, it should be mentioned that Eq. 9 was
obtained for T th T g / [cf. relation (6)].
Obviously, because T th 1 T th 2 there exist two
parameters 1 2 for the two thermocouples
and thus, 1 (1) is different from 2 (2).
Substituting Eq. 8 in Eq. 19 yields
1 1

6 1 th11 g

th1C pth d th1

(20)

Similarly, we have for the thick thermocouple

1 2

th2C pth d th2

T g3.

1 2 1 ,
with

1 2 0,

(22)

(24)

where

1
N
1
N

i1

i1

i
dT th
1

dt
i
dT th
2

dt

i
T th
1

i
T th
2

(25)

may be calculated as previously for the time

constants by considering a set of N samples of
temperature. Now 1 and 2 can be derived
from Eqs. 22 through 25. Furthermore, if the
thermocouples are made with the same material
(as in this work) and that soot deposits similarly
on both probes, then th 1 th 2, th 1C p th2
th 2C p th2 and

1 d th2
.
2 d th1

However, this approach needs a knowledge of

d th 2 and d th 1, which may vary during the measurements, on account of soot deposition. Such
effects will be ignored. The main differences
between the present study and Tagawa and
Ohtas work [18] are that:

Dividing Eq. 20 by Eq. 21 gives

(23)

Nevertheless, another equation is necessary to

identify these parameters. To find it, subtract
Eq. 10 (where 1 and 1 have been changed to
1and 1) multiplied by 2 from Eq. 11 (where 2
and 2 have been changed to 2 and 2) multiplied by 1. If it is assumed that the two thermocouples are close enough for T g 1 T g 2 then

(21)

1 th1 th2C pth d th2

.
2 th2 th1C pth d th1
1

T g3.

6 2 th21 g

53

The model is different in that it was developed

to measure the temperature of the reaction zone,
A different functional is minimized in this work
for identifying the time constants 1 and 2,
The minimization method used involves a
fixed point method, which before was not
necessary,
Their previous model does not use the gain
coefficient ,
Analytical expressions were derived for (Eq.
8) and (Eq. 9) which reveal that they do not
only depend on h.

54

P.-A. SANTONI ET AL.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Two kinds of experiments were conducted: the
first considered clean unbounded freely burning
ethanol flames as tests for the proposed reconstruction method and the second ones applied
this method to flames spreading across a bed of
pine needles. The ethanol flames present
smaller variations of frequency than the flames
from pine needles and are more convenient for
testing the method. A characteristic jittering
frequency (which will be used hereafter) dominates the fluctuating thermal structure of such a
flame [21]. For all the recorded temperatures
presented, a spectral analysis was conducted
with Matlab. Thus, each plot of temperature
versus time was filtered with a Butterworth
Infinite Impulse Response low pass filter to
remove noise, that is, any frequency higher than
25 Hz. The characteristics of this filter are:
order 12, passband frequency range 0 to 20 Hz,
ripple in the passband of 0.5 dB, stopband
frequency range 40 to 1000 Hz and stopband
attenuation of 40 dB. This treatment did not
alter the temperature curves, because the phase
of this filter was linear in the frequency range 0
to 20 Hz. In addition, G 1 and G 2 in Eqs. 16, 17,
and 25 were calculated from the derivative of a
polynomial approximation to the discrete temperatures recorded. To this end, a two-order
polynomial approximation was used to fit each
set of three successive points contained in the
sequences of T th 1 and T th 2. This local curvefitting was very accurate and the derivatives G 1
and G 2 were calculated from the coefficients of
these polynomials at the centered point of each
set of three points.

Fig. 3. Thin and thick thermocouples temperatures for the

ethanol flame.

are displayed in Fig. 3, where both responses for

thin and thick thermocouples have been superimposed for a short time. Moreover, the spectral analysis in Fig. 4 for both thin and thick
thermocouples shows a clear dominant frequency at 7.77 Hz. It can be assumed that
during a short time interval of 0.6 s (1.52.1 s)
the thermocouple-signals in Fig. 3 resemble sine
curves as depicted in Fig. 5. This particularity
will be used below to show the consistency of
the reconstruction method.
The compensation of the thermocouples response was conducted with a methodology similar to Tagawa and Ohtas [18]. A first run was
applied on the full length of data shown in Fig.
3 to estimate mean time constants and in our
case mean gain coefficients. As previously

First Test with an Ethanol Flame

The double thermocouple probe was located at
8 cm above the cupel of ethanol. During the
test, three steps based on the visual and infrared observation of the flame could be distinguished: the flame grew, then the flame fully
developed with a visible height of 15 cm and
finally the flame vanished. During the second
step, the recorded temperature showed large
fluctuations. An interesting aspect is that inside
these large fluctuations also appear, higher fluctuations of the temperature. These fluctuations

Fig. 4. Spectra for the signal traces recorded by the thin and
thick thermocouples.

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT IN A SPREADING FIRE

Fig. 5. Thermocouples temperatures and compensated gas

temperature for the ethanol flame.

shown [18], the use of the mean time constant

for the thermocouples response leads to inaccurate temperatures. Therefore, a time window
was applied to reduce the length of data used
and the mean time constants and gains were
calculated at the center of this window. Even if
these computed values are averages, they will be
referred to, as before [18], as fluctuating time
constants and gains. The principle is to find a
time window large enough to keep the high
frequency components of the signal, but small
enough to avoid any large temperature variations, which modify the values of the time
constants and gains. In the present study, a
constant time window equal to three times the
mean time constant of the thin thermocouple
was used since it represents for a first-order,
linear system the time needed to get a response
at 5% of a Heaviside step entry signal. This
means that the response is almost achieved. The
compensated temperatures for the signals displayed in Fig. 3 are provided in Fig. 5 for the
time interval 1.52.1 s; the method seems successful. The degree of similarity between the
compensated temperature T g 1 and T g 2 is revealed by their cross-correlation coefficient,
which is R 0.99. The maximum compensated
temperature was 1430C, that is, close to the
adiabatic combustion temperature of ethanol in
air (1480C) and so is not absurd. An analysis
was conducted to evaluate how radiative heat
transfer affects the measured fluctuating temperature; it was found that the compensated

55

Fig. 6. Time constant and recorded temperature versus

time for the thin thermocouple in ethanol flame.

temperature was greater (by 10%) when the

radiative heat flux was considered.
The mean values obtained for the fluctuating
time constants and gains were 1 0.049 s, 2
0.132 s, 1 0.89, and 2 0.87 for the signals
shown during the time interval 0 to 3.5 s in Fig.
3. The fluctuating time constant 1 and gain
coefficient 1 displayed in Figs. 6 and 7 fluctuate
greatly around their mean values. This agrees
with previous results [17, 18] on the fluctuating
nature of , which should accordingly be considered when reconstructing the gas temperature.
Figures 6 and 7 show that and increase when
the junction temperature decreases and decrease when the junction temperature increases.
This trend has also been obtained by Tagawa
and Ohta [18] for the time constants. It is hard
to bring more insight to this behavior, because
accurate information on the flow around the

Fig. 7. Gain coefficient and recorded temperature versus

time for the thin thermocouple in ethanol flame.

56

P.-A. SANTONI ET AL.

junction is not available. But it has been shown

(cf. Eqs. 8 and 9) that the heat-transfer coefficient h was not the only parameter which should
be considered as affecting the time constant and
gain. The ratio of the fluctuating time constants
of the thermocouples was found not to be
constant. This result, previously revealed by
Tagawa and Ohta [18], is corroborated here.
Thus, assuming 2/1 to be invariant may lead to
uncertainties in the compensated temperature.
A simple analytical study may show the relevance of this method. Obviously, it can not be
considered as a demonstration of the validity of
the method, but confirms its consistency. Assume a sinusoidally varying gas temperature
T gt T g T g sin t

(26)

where T g is a positive constant. By assuming

that the temperature of the thermocouples follow Eqs. 10 and 11 and by assuming that the
parameters 1, 2, 1, and 2 are constant during
a time window, which is consistent with the
method used for their identification, the responses of the thermocouples will be

T thjt jT g T thj0 jT g

jT g j
exp (t/ j)
1 2 j2

Reconstruction of Fluctuating Temperature

for a Flame Spreading Across a Bed of Pine
Needles

jT g

sin t j,
1 2 j 2 1/ 2
with j arctan ( j ), where the subscript j
refers to thermocouples 1 (thin) and 2 (thick).
The second term on the right hand side of the
last equation disappears when t increases.
Hence the thermocouples will have temperatures varying like
T thjt T thj T thj sin t j

dally changing gas temperature as in Eq. 26.

The mean parameters 1 0.044 s, 2 0.117 s,
1 0.86, and 2 0.83 derived from the
fluctuating parameters for this time interval, can
be verified as follows. Firstly, the time lag of the
signals displayed in Fig. 5 (0.0054 s) can be
compared with the theoretical time lag (2
1)/ 0.0049 s calculated from the identified
values of 1, 2 and the dominant frequency of
both signal (7.77 Hz). Secondly, it will be noticed that (T th 2/T th 1) ( 2 / 1 ) (see Eq. 27).
The mean value of the recorded temperatures
for both thermocouples gives T th 2/T th 1
0.9508, which is close to 0.9643, the ratio
calculated from the identified values of 1 and
2. Furthermore, the ratio of the ranges of the
two thermocouple temperatures is (T th 2/
Tth1) ((2(1 212)1/2)/(1(1 222)1/2)).
The value calculated from the data in Fig. 5 gives
(Tth2/Tth1) 0.3978, which is close to that
calculated from the analytical expression ((2(1
212)1/2)/(1(1 222)1/2)) 0.4075. As stated
previously, this analysis is not a demonstration of
the validity of the reconstruction method proposed
here; conversely it can be seen that the modeled
temperatures of the thermocouples given in Eq. 27
match accurately the measurements. Therefore, it is
reasonable to expect that the gas temperature
will be well compensated using this model.

(27)

with T th j j T g , T th j ( j T g )/(1
2 j 2 ) 1/ 2 and j arctan ( j ).
Figure 5 shows that the thermocouples do
have temperatures behaving like Eq. 27 during
the short time interval 1.5 to 2.1 s. The thermocouples can also be approximated by a firstorder linear system as demonstrated above,
because T th does not vary greatly. Thus, the
signals can be viewed as responses to a sinusoi-

Figure 8 shows the temperature of a thin thermocouple located 5 cm above the bed of needles. Detailed information has been given [22]
on the different phases during the development
of forest fires. Similarly, in Fig. 8 as the fire front
spreads, heat is transferred from the hot flame
to the unburnt fuel, whose temperature increases (heating phase). When this fuel becomes hot enough, it devolatilizes. The resulting
gaseous fuel reacts once it has come into contact with oxygen and a flame ensues (combustion phase). These features are displayed in Fig.
8, where three distinct zones can be distinguished. In the first zone, the temperature increases as the fire approaches, until it contacts
the measuring thermocouple. Afterwards, the
signal fluctuates around some sort of average

TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT IN A SPREADING FIRE

Fig. 8. Thin thermocouple temperature curve versus time

for a fire spreading across a pine needle bed.

value, meaning that the sensor is immersed in

the flame. This second zone represents the
combustion phase. After this zone, which lasts
several seconds (depending on fuel conditions),
during the third zone the flame decreases in size
and hence the temperature falls because of a
lack of readily available fuel. An infra-red picture of the flame passing the thermocouple tree
is provided in Fig. 9, which shows the stable
shape of the flame during the temperature
measurement.
The technique for reconstructing the temperature of the gas was applied to the data recorded by the double thermocouple probe located 5 cm above the fuel. As previously for
ethanol, only a short time interval is considered

Fig. 9. Infrared picture for the flame going through the

thermocouple tree during the spread.

57

Fig. 10. Thermocouple temperatures and compensated gas

temperature for a flame spreading across a pine needle bed.

in Fig. 10, where the recorded and compensated

temperatures are plotted. It can be seen that the
reconstructed curves match correctly. The degree of similarity between the compensated
temperatures T g 1 and T g 2 is given by their
cross-correlation coefficient, which is R 0.99.
This result shows that although the temperature
displays a higher number of frequencies than in
the ethanol flame, the method for reconstructing the gas temperature remains efficient. With
regard to the fluctuating time constant and gain
coefficient, the same tendency as in the ethanol
flame was observed, that is, there exists a negative correlation between them and the recorded temperature. The mean values obtained
for the fluctuating time constant and gain were
1 0.051 s, 2 0.150 s, 1 0.97, and 2
0.96. These values are higher than those obtained for burning ethanol. This can be attributed
to the mean temperatures of the thermocouples
being lower in the current experiments (see Figs. 5
and 10). The maximum temperature compensated
on the whole experiments was 1250C. This
result is not absurd, considering the adiabatic
combustion temperature (1330C) in air for
formaldehyde COH2, an equivalent substance to
the volatiles released by the pyrolysis of wood [23].
It should also be noticed that although the maximum value obtained using conventional thermocouples in Pinus pinaster needles fires [24, 25] was
always 1000C, conversely den Breejen et al. [26]
have obtained 1300C, thanks to infrared measurements. This confirms the results obtained here.

58
CONCLUSION

A simple, sound and cheap method has been

proposed for measuring the temperature in
the continuous flame region, using a double
thermocouple probe,
A model was developed for the temperature
of a spherical hot junction of a thermocouple
in a fire plume, above a burning liquid or
solid,
The method for measuring the models coefficients, that is, the time constants and gain
coefficients, is easy to use,
The expressions derived for these two parameters show that they not only depend on the
heat-transfer coefficient, h, but also on the
flames and the thermocouples radiative
properties,
The results are encouraging in that they show
that the model for the temperature of the
thermocouple bead is capable of matching
accurately the recorded temperature for an
ethanol flame,
The compensated maximum temperature concurs with den Breejens result [26] for fire
spreading across a bed of Pinus pinaster needles.

From a practical point of view, this work has

developed a method for measuring a fluctuating
temperature, which may be tested in actual
forest fires. Moreover, it is now possible to
compare the prediction of physical models of
fire spread, such as the multiphase one, with
measured time-averaged temperatures inside
the burning zone.

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Received 16 October 2001; revised 12 April 2002; accepted 30

April 2002