EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES OF FIRE HAZARD OF PINE NEEDLES IN LABORATORY AND FIELD CONDITIONS

Introduction. The fire hazard analysis of young pine stands was carried out. There are listed the most common sources of ignition as factors of influence on the occurrence of a fire. There is described the examples of studies on solid combustible materials` ignition, particularly, forest litter. The device developed is proposed for studying the process of forest fuels combustion. The aim of the work is determine the time to ignition of pine needles, as well as the forest litter in young pine stands by using a Device for the study of flammable material combustion using an electric heating element. Material statement. Laboratory studies have been done to ignite three types of needles of young pine plantations: fresh, inherent in the composition of forest underlay and dried needles. There was conducted an experimental studies of the time interval to the ignition of pine stands forest litter in the field condition with the use of the proposed device. Scientific novelty. It for the first time was established that the time interval before ignition of freshly cut needles exceeds by almost 4 times the meaning of this value in comparison with the dried needles. It was established that the value of the time to ignition of pine needles fallen in the forest litter, obtained from the results of field studies, with a slight deviation of its moisture, is almost the same with the values obtained in laboratory conditions. The results indicate that the forest litter in pine stands is fire-hazardous and can deal with a frequency close to ½ of a source with a temperature of 450°C, on average 25,7 seconds. There has been substantiated the expediency of using the device for the study of flammable material combustion using an electric heating element for investigating indicators of forest combustible materials` fire hazard.