After Fires at Golf Courses, Study Suggests Unusual Culprits: Titanium Clubs
Golf courses are covered in hazards ponds, bunkers, thick rough but here is another: the golf clubs themselves.
Scientists have determined that striking a rock while swinging a titanium club can create a shower of sparks that are hot enough, and last long enough, to start a brush fire.
The finding, by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, clears up what fire officials in Southern California have seen as a mystery: the origin of two recent golf course fires, including one that burned 25 acres and injured a firefighter in 2010.
Steve Concialdi, a captain with the Orange County Fire Authority, in Irvine, said that in both incidents, golfers using 3-irons with titanium-alloy heads had said they hit the ground and created sparks that started the fires.
That was hard for anybody to believe, Concialdi said. We were thinking they were started by cigars or cigarettes.
The authority approached Irvine researchers, including James C. Earthman, a professor of materials science, about verifying the golfers claims. Although Earthman plays golf only occasionally, his interest was piqued because he knew that bits of titanium could burn spontaneously when exposed to air. He remembered an accident from his undergraduate days at Rice, when another student was cleaning some titanium particles in a chamber.
The rag ignited in his hand, Earthman said. That left a pretty big impression on me.
He and his colleagues set up a test tee in which they embedded rocks. Earthman approached a robot manufacturer about borrowing one of its machines to take the swings, he said, but when they found out we were going to hit rocks with it, they declined.
So he and others took the swings, using three titanium clubs and three with stainless steel heads. Hitting rocks turned out to be no problem. I discovered that its very easy to crush a rock with a golf club, Earthman said. Like going through butter.
They recorded the results with a high-speed video camera and reported in a recent paper in the journal Fire and Materials that all of the titanium clubs created sparks while none of the steel ones did.
The impact with the rock abraded the titanium surface, producing small particles up to about one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter that burned for up to a second, at temperatures high enough to cause dry vegetation to ignite.
The real danger seemed to be when you had titanium on the sole of the club and on the leading edge, Earthman said. That created a lot of sparks, including some that flew as far as four feet.
The more sparks you have, the further they go and the longer they last, you increase the probability of ignition, he said.
Concialdi said that in one of the fires, the golfer and his partner tried unsuccessfully to put it out using ice from their beer cooler. The blaze consumed about an acre, but more damage was averted when a concrete cart path acted as a firebreak.
Given the drought in California and the extreme fire danger, Concialdi said, his department had advice for duffers who used titanium clubs and hit a ball into a rocky spot.
Were just asking golfers to either take a penalty or, if your fellow golfers will allow you to improve your lie, do it, he said. But do not hit the ball in this type of area.
Golf courses are covered in hazards ponds, bunkers, thick rough but here is another: the golf clubs themselves.
Scientists have determined that striking a rock while swinging a titanium club can create a shower of sparks that are hot enough, and last long enough, to start a brush fire.
The finding, by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, clears up what fire officials in Southern California have seen as a mystery: the origin of two recent golf course fires, including one that burned 25 acres and injured a firefighter in 2010.
Steve Concialdi, a captain with the Orange County Fire Authority, in Irvine, said that in both incidents, golfers using 3-irons with titanium-alloy heads had said they hit the ground and created sparks that started the fires.
That was hard for anybody to believe, Concialdi said. We were thinking they were started by cigars or cigarettes.
The authority approached Irvine researchers, including James C. Earthman, a professor of materials science, about verifying the golfers claims. Although Earthman plays golf only occasionally, his interest was piqued because he knew that bits of titanium could burn spontaneously when exposed to air. He remembered an accident from his undergraduate days at Rice, when another student was cleaning some titanium particles in a chamber.
The rag ignited in his hand, Earthman said. That left a pretty big impression on me.
He and his colleagues set up a test tee in which they embedded rocks. Earthman approached a robot manufacturer about borrowing one of its machines to take the swings, he said, but when they found out we were going to hit rocks with it, they declined.
So he and others took the swings, using three titanium clubs and three with stainless steel heads. Hitting rocks turned out to be no problem. I discovered that its very easy to crush a rock with a golf club, Earthman said. Like going through butter.
They recorded the results with a high-speed video camera and reported in a recent paper in the journal Fire and Materials that all of the titanium clubs created sparks while none of the steel ones did.
The impact with the rock abraded the titanium surface, producing small particles up to about one-fiftieth of an inch in diameter that burned for up to a second, at temperatures high enough to cause dry vegetation to ignite.
The real danger seemed to be when you had titanium on the sole of the club and on the leading edge, Earthman said. That created a lot of sparks, including some that flew as far as four feet.
The more sparks you have, the further they go and the longer they last, you increase the probability of ignition, he said.
Concialdi said that in one of the fires, the golfer and his partner tried unsuccessfully to put it out using ice from their beer cooler. The blaze consumed about an acre, but more damage was averted when a concrete cart path acted as a firebreak.
Given the drought in California and the extreme fire danger, Concialdi said, his department had advice for duffers who used titanium clubs and hit a ball into a rocky spot.
Were just asking golfers to either take a penalty or, if your fellow golfers will allow you to improve your lie, do it, he said. But do not hit the ball in this type of area.
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