Flamepaths

Flamepaths is a term used in combustion science and related fields to describe the trajectories along which a flame front propagates through a reactive medium. It can refer to instantaneous flame-front trajectories in a flow field or to the cumulative routes traced as a flame advances over time. The concept is applied in fire safety engineering, combustion research, and visual effects to analyze propagation patterns, identify critical corridors of fuel and air, and forecast ignition risk.

In modeling contexts, flamepaths are obtained by solving the equations governing reacting flows, typically the Navier–Stokes equations with energy and species transport, augmented by a model for the flame front. Front-tracking approaches such as level-set methods or the G-equation treat the flame surface as an evolving iso-surface of a progress variable. Path extraction then proceeds by tracing intersections of the flame surface with planes or by following the flame front along streamlines to obtain forward or backward paths.

Applications include designing ventilation and suppression strategies in enclosed spaces, assessing wildfire spread, and generating believable flame motion in computer graphics. In CFD studies, flamepaths are used to quantify propagation speed, curvature effects, boundary influence, and potential local extinction. In graphics, they guide particle systems, shading, and motion blur to improve realism.

Challenges include sensitivity to turbulence, complex chemistry, and model or mesh resolution choices, which can affect the accuracy of extracted flamepaths. See also flame front, front tracking, level-set methods, and combustion modeling.