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Synonyms

Mass loss rate

Definition

Burning rate (BR) is the amount of fuel mass that is consumed per unit of time in the course of a combustion process.

Overall Combustion

Mathematically the BR is defined by:

$$ BR=\left|\frac{dm}{dt}\right| $$
(1)

In this equation, m is the instantaneous value of the mass of the fuel. The modulus sign is used to define a positive value of the BR as the time derivative of mass is essentially negative. To determine this derivative, it is necessary to evaluate the mass of the fuel during the combustion process.

Very often, the combustion process is not constant in the course of time. Typical plots of mass loss curves of a fuel during the process of combustion are given in Figs. 1 and 2:

Fig. 1
figure 1

Mass loss curve with a period of constant mass loss rate

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Correspondence to Domingos X. Viegas .

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Viegas, D.X., Pinto, C., Raposo, J. (2018). Burning Rate. In: Manzello, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_50-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_50-1

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