Abstract:

Nelson (1984) and Simard (1968) model was used as a model of equilibrium moisture content, and we estimated the equilibrium moisture content function and timelag , and then forecasted fuel moisture content using the estimated value as parameters, and finally analyzed the impact of different modeling sample size and the model of equilibrium moisture content on parameter estimation and moisture content forecast error. The results indicate that: 1) Catchpole et al. method(When modeling sample size is 84)performs well in fuel moisture prediction. It shows Catchpole et al. (2001) method has a strong applicability in estimating fuel moisture from field data. At least 80 or more data are advised to be used and 30 data can also be used when error standard is not high(3%, for example).2) The predicting results based on Nelson(1984) model are better than that based on Simard model when sample size is small, but when it is over 84 , the two performances are not significantly different.

Key words: fuel, model, timelag, equilibrium moisture content