Aerosol Dispersion Modeling
Simulation results of aggregate particle count from a side view of computational domain.
Overview
Researchers have found that wildfire smoke can transport millions of microscopic cells across far distances. This can cause problems to local biomes because these cells can be made up of pathogen cells. The goal of this research is to collect field data on the amount of transported cells during a wildfire and develop a simulation that can show the spread of these particles.
Motivation: Wildfire plumes can transport millions of microbial aerosol particles to very far distances potentially infecting local biomes with pathogen cells
Approach: In-collaboration with the University of Idaho, we develop a numerical model for the transport of aerosol particles in a wildfire simulation domain
Results: A highly-scalable and adaptable computational model is develop to simulate the transport of 500 million particles. A novel implementation of a staggered coupling between the aerosol transport model and wildfire software WRF-SFIRE is developed to simulate spot fire ignitions caused by ember transport.
Simulation Results
Below are some of my visualizations of the various simulations ran using the aerosol transport model.
Manning Creek Fire Simulation
Aggregate count of particles per pixel shows high velocity winds carry lots of particle downstream in atmospheric wind.
Grass Fire Simulation
Aggregate count of particles per pixel shows less transport of particles due to low wind speeds, however we can see that the aerosol transport model is adaptable to creating new particles with the shape of the fire perimeter.
Interactive 3D Particle Dispersion Plot
This figure is an interactive plot of the Manning Creek Fire that you can rotate, zoom in and out, and access particle location metrics. The land topography and fire area are displayed showing were the simulation domain and origin of dispersed particles. The particles are colors based on their captured simulation time, and we can see the particles were transported in high wind speeds early on in the simulation and less late in the simulation.