Determining the trajectory of a smoke flame using satellite images

Abstract

In a number of cases, for example, when choosing the design of the exit part of a chimney, when taking into account the characteristics of the underlying surface and meteorological characteristics of the area, or as a means of verifying variant calculations in the ANSYS environment, a study of the trajectory of the smoke plume in natural conditions is required. One of the simplest, most convenient and cheapest ways to determine a trajectory is to photograph it and then decipher it. So, for example, a vertical chimney, if the direction of the camera is raised above the horizon, and the chimney is not located in the center of the photo, it looks inclined in the photo. This means that at the top of the image and at the bottom there are different horizontal linear scales of the image. The angle at which the camera was installed can also be calculated from the photograph. In addition, the same vertical height interval occupies a smaller length in the upper part of the pipe and a larger one in the lower part. This means that in the upper part of the image and in the lower part there are different vertical linear scales of the image. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that objects of the same size have different sizes in the picture. The further away an object is located, the less space it takes up in the photo. Thus, in order to calculate the trajectory of a smoke plume from a photograph, we need to know the orientation of the main optical axis during the photograph and the distance to the photograph plane, which we choose perpendicular to the main optical axis and passing through the object, from which we can determine the initial average linear scales, and the direction smoke plume spread.

TARGET. Development of a new, simpler method for recalculating the trajectory of a smoke plume from a chimney using available Google maps to calculate the original scales in a photograph.

METHODOLOGY Allows you to trace the entire sequence of actions from determining the coordinates of the shooting point to recalculating the coordinates of the selected points of the torch boundaries in the photograph relative to the emission source onto an orthogonal plane.

RESULTS. A new method for calculating the trajectory of a smoke plume from a single photograph has been developed, the accuracy of which was tested using known sizes in the original objects, and which turned out to be higher than that previously used for these purposes.