The final version of our paper, "Burning Behavior of Vertical Matchstick Arrays", by Michael Gollner, Yanxuan Xie, Minkyu Lee, Yuji Nakamura and Ali Rangwala is finally available online through Combustion Science and Technology: 
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00102202.2011.652787.


It can be downloaded above if you have access to the journal, I can send you a free link to download the article, or a pre-print version of the article is available on my website.
http://maeresearch.ucsd.edu/~mgollner/publications/2011_matchstick_cst.pdf

Abstract 

Vertical arrays of horizontally protruding wood matchsticks, 0.25 cm in diameter and 1.91 cm long, arranged from 1 to 5 matches across were used to investigate the influence of the spacing of discrete fuel elements on rates of upward flame spread. Vertical spacing's between the matchsticks in the array (0.0, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4 cm) were used to reveal the influence of separation distance on rates of upward flame spread, defined as progression of the ignition front, time to burnout and mass-loss rates. Advancement of the ignition front was found to vary linearly with time for the 0.0 cm spacing, while reaching nearly a $t^{1.7}$ advancement with time for the furthest-spaced arrays. Rates of upward flame spread were found to increase dramatically for spacings between 0 cm and 0.8 cm and experienced only a slight increase thereafter. Based on these observations, the influence of convective heating was hypothesized to dominate this spread mechanism, and predictions of ignition times were developed using convective heat-transfer correlations. Flame heights and mass-loss rates followed a similar pattern. Individual matchstick burnout times were observed to remain nearly constant for all cases at all heights except the zero-spacing case, which was nearly three times longer than in spaced arrays. This behavior in spaced cases was modeled using a droplet burning theory extended for a cylindrical geometry and solving for the time to burnout. A similar calculation was performed for the zero-spacing case relating it to vertical combustion over a wall. The average mass-loss rate for a single matchstick was also determined and used to predict the mass-loss rate of a spreading fire over matchsticks.

Pre-Print of Symposium Paper now Available

A pre-print of our symposium paper, "Experimental Study of Upward Flame Spread and Burning of an
Inclined Fuel Surface," accepted to the 34th International Symposium of the Combustion Institute has now been posted online and can be downloaded here: http://maeresearch.ucsd.edu/~mgollner/publications/2012_inclined_symposium.pdf

Abstract:

A thermally thick slab of polymethyl methacrylate was used to study the effects of the inclination angle of a fuel surface on upward flame spread. While investigation of upward spread over solid fuels has typically been restricted to an upright orientation, inclination of the fuel surface from the vertical is a common occurrence that has not yet been adequately addressed. By performing experiments on 10 cm wide by 20 cm tall fuel samples it was found that the maximum flame-spread rate, occurring nearly in a vertical configuration, does not correspond to the maximum fuel mass-loss rate, which occurs closer to a horizontal configuration. A detailed
study of both flame spread and steady burning at different angles of inclination revealed the influence of buoyancy-induced flows in modifying heat-flux profiles ahead of the flame front, which control flame spread, and in affecting the heat flux to the burning surface of the fuel, which controls fuel mass-loss rates.