093 - The story of the golden era for the US fire science with James Quintiere
It's finally here, the episode many of you were waiting for! Discussing the history of US fire movement with prof. James Quintiere from the University of Maryland.
I often wondered what it felt like in the 1970's and 80's when some of the greatest discoveries of fire science were made. I mean discoveries like the instabilities that lead to flashover, the role of radiant heat transfer in compartment fire dynamics or the definition of the flows through openings... things so fundamental to us today, that we maybe sometimes forget that someone had first to discover and describe them. This is what I've tried to learn from prof. Quintiere, had an enormous impact on the research carried in the US in that period, and was also one of the key people fostering international collaboration and exchange of experience. These are the elements of today's story. There is no point in explaining more of the episode contents, you should simply tune into what James has to say!
Keep your eyes open, next week we will run a second episode with prof. Quintiere, this time with more of the technicalities of the experiments carried at NBS in his time there!
Episode artwork image credit - NIST Digital Archives, read the story of fire testing at NIST here https://www.nist.gov/feature-stories/trial-fire-look-nist-fire-testing-through-years
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Fire Science Show episode 93. This was kind of supposed to be episode 100, given the caliber of my guests today. What I thought it's unfair towards you to keep this episode hidden for eight more weeks. So I'm. I'm just going to publish it and I hope you enjoy it as much as if it was published as an episode hundreds. And the guest is one of the biggest names in the Fire Science it's professor James Quintiere. You most likely connect him with, uh, his work at the University of Maryland. But in this podcast episode, we mostly talk about earlier, uh, things that were, he was involved with NBS that's National Bureau of Standards that eventually changed into NIST, the National institute of Standards and Technology. Where he participated in a great, maybe even the greatest in history, experimental, uh, fire science periods. In the world and, uh, that's exactly what I wanted to learn from him. What What does it feel like making research in seventies, eighties? What was it like touching the new fundamental things in fire that were undiscovered at that point? Think about it. Flashover phenomenon, the zones, the, uh, All the things related to the modes of heat transfer, flaming bingemans, stuff like that. Amazing amazing time. Uh, to be a fire researcher. I also wanted to learn. Uh, what people were involved at the time, how the collaboration looked like how they've developed,, why things like IAFSS were formed. So, so this is the backbone. Off today's episode. Kind of US centered because James is giving his personal experiences. Being an American. Scientists, but I think a very important lesson for the whole of fire science. As between the lines, you can read out why these periods was such fruitful. To the discoveries in fire science. Great news for you. There's one more episode with James coming focused a little more on physics and the experiments themselves, like the technicalities of the experiments that were conducted. So look up forward for that one. And today. Please enjoy. As I discussed with professor James Quintiere. Uh, the history and maybe the golden era of American fire movement. Before I let you in full the episode with James Quintiere I wanted to reflect on something. One of the aspects of the greatness of the times James is talking about was the availability of funding and people investing in fire science. And, The second thing was the connection between the scientists and how they spread information. I hope to achieve the second thing through this podcast. And it's possible also because I have a supporter that supports me. In doing that. And that's the OFR Consultants. So I am hugely thankful for OFR two going here, along with me. And, and supporting me in the development of this podcast, our collaboration, even though it's just a few months in, has allowed me to do some really interesting stuff. And then so much more. Gang to happen. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you OFR. And if you had no chance to know them yet, OFR is a multi award winning independent consultancy, dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. It's the UKs leading fire risk consultancy. and OFR's globally . Established team as develop reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise with colleagues working across the planets to protect people. Property and environment. OFR is always looking to grow its team and is always keen to hear from industry professionals who would want to collaborate with them on the fire safety. Futures this year. If you're one of such person get in touch at ofrconsultants.com and if you're an academic look up for the stipends and scholarships that are being funded in major universities across UK. OFR, thanks for being a patron of this show. And they are helping me create this content free for everyone. And now your well-deserved episode with James
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fire Science Show. I'm today with Professor James Quintiere James. Nice to have you in the show.
James Quintiere:Very, very happy to be here.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:so fantastic to meet you and, finally learn from you some stuff about, uh, fire science as a long dream of mine to, to learn from you. Uh, professor Quintiere, so I would like to start with how did you end up being a fire scientist? I saw your, PhD about convective, uh, flow, so I guess that was a nice interlude to fire science, but what, what built your interest in this, uh, part of science?
James Quintiere:Uh, like many who go down paths after they graduate from. High school or college. it's accidental.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:You would not believe how many people say that in the podcast.
James Quintiere:No, it's true, it's true. We go down the path and if we went down another one, we never quite know what would happen. Phil Thomas told me the same thing. He got into fire by accident, so, yes, I, I got hired by mbs, which later became NBS and I s t, and uh, that was around 1971. And, and that's how I came to be involved in.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:That's, around the time when. Significant amount of funds was dedicated to fire research at NBS I think I've read a paper from Professor Hottel who, who described the fight for how to fund the fire safety and, and you've entered it as, as this became reality, right?
James Quintiere:Yes. It was emerging at that time. There were several things I think that helped it. Um, there was a great deal of interest in safety in the sixties. There was a man named Ralph Nader, who focused a lot on, car safety.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:But fire safety got put into that because someone recognized that, US had the, uh, one of the highest per capita death rates in the world. Actually, it was a mistake. They were counting motor vehicle fires as, uh, 10 times the amount. and, so the government decided it was gonna put some money into this. President Nixon appointed a committee. Hottel and Emmons from Harvard were advocates for fire for a long time. and Emmons did not get on the committee, but, Eckerd, uh, from Minnesota got on the committee and they said that there should be money spent for fire research. Uh, that money went to the National Science Foundation. At the same time, the fire service passed, some legislation and, uh, that responsibility went to NBS or NIST. Now, also NIST now. Had a fire program that went back to the. Early days of 1920, almost, after a big fire in Baltimore. So for a long time, a man by the name of, uh, Ingberg at n b s focused on, uh, the survival of buildings in fire. And in, in 1970, it was turning to the survival of people in fire or people in cars or things like that. And there was another act passed that said fabrics were becoming more flammable because they weren't made of cotton and wool. Now they were made of polyester and b nylon and things like that. And so issues were popping up. and at NBS there were three programs. One, the old fire program, the fire service related program, and the, um, a fabric, flammability issue. So, there was a push to unite all those programs and at the same time, there was, I think $2 million being, uh, allocated to, the National Science Foundation under a man by the name of Ralph Long, who was grounding up all academics. 2 million in the early seventies, could fund 20 solid academic projects. So he brought some of the best people in combustion and he transfer in flu mechanics from academia into fire. eventually those programs merged in the early seventies in nist. they brought in John Lyons to head the, that Unified program and the NSF program was brought in there too. So John Lyons really, was a visionary. He wrote his own book on fire. He wanted to learn, he was a, PhD combustion chemist from industry on retardants. And, he really pushed to learn more. And, and that those were the seeds of the early fire movement. And with that, someone like John Lyons said, we need to, connect to the British and the Japanese. And, that really was the start of, uh, international kind of, cadre. to put their resources together to learn.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:so by the old program at nist, uh, or NBS you meant the fire resistance stuff that was happening there, the structures in fires.
James Quintiere:Yes. Under Ingberg at the time, Alex Robertson was headed that program, but NS had politically, uh, lot of changes.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:so what interests me is that the focus seems to be on, on the structures or on the, the money, to be honest. The, the buildings, the factories. It was, I guess the same when the sprinklers were invented even earlier, how factory mutual became, uh, a thing, how UL was funded.
James Quintiere:Well, FM became a thing because the, people at, FM in Boston, uh, were close to Howard Emmons and he was a consultant and they wanted to bring more understanding of fire, into their work and help them with their in insurance business. so they've sponsored at the same, just bef before the seventies in the late sixties, they sponsored a program at. NBS under Howard Emmons and John Rocket was brought in to, to manage that program, they brought in three or four scientists to work at, NBS then moved to FM Global and form the basis of the FM Global Fire Program. John de Ris was one of those people.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I find it very how it shifted from, from buildings to, to, to human safety, as you said, and also involvement of, of, of new materials like polymers. What, uh, what a time to start a career
James Quintiere:Well, the people side I think was fostered by the work f the, the attitude in the sixties that said we should consider more effects of human welfare. And so the, the safety in cars was really the driver there. and, when I got involved in fire in the early seventies, far as the structure of buildings was concerned, that was passe.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay.
James Quintiere:didn't need to work on that anymore. And then came to World Trade Center.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:that's very interesting. When I, I interviewed, uh, professor Babrauskas in here, uh, I think he said everyone was, uh, expecting that performance based engineering and, uh, modeling buildings were soon overtake, fire resistance tests and, know, the historical approach, uh, which I guess still didn't happen up till today.
James Quintiere:Well, If you work in an institute, I think, that deals with test methods and regulations. regulations are not always followed
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:even though there's test methods. You had Grenfell in the Uk. If the simple test of, combustibility was applied to the outside wall, material never would've been on there. In the same sense in the World Trade Center, a lot of people don't realize this, but the wrong installation was put on the trusses in the beginning, and they corrected it 30 years later, but they still didn't put enough on the building. That fell down in 102 minutes, had doubled the insulation as the other building that fell in 56. You could do a simple. Structural engineering calculation of the insulation on steel, which is almost an outer brake and result
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:predictive. I don't want to get into the World Trade Center, but I'm just, if this thing goes and reaches other people, someone needs to look at the fuel load was used by NIST using FDS and see if that's a rational fuel load. My conclusion is that it was too low and cause of that FDS didn't have a long enough fire and so the trusses were to be adequately protected in both buildings. A total wrong conclusion for Fire Re.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:well, uh,
James Quintiere:I'm sorry to bring in this political issue.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I've actually been warned about, uh,
James Quintiere:Y y yes. It's a passion with me because I feel like they made a terrible mistake of a very simple thing, uh, someone just needs to go back over their, auditing of the materials because we did it and they said paper doesn't burn file cabinets. Anyway, we, will, we continue on.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yes. Thank you. I, I'm, really curious about those years of, fire science. I always, uh, somehow about the seventies, maybe the eighties as some sort of golden era fire research. If I think about all these brilliant developments in plume theories, in in compartment fires, in the early computer models, it, it has always fascinated me. And then when I was preparing to this interview, I was reading some of your reviews about state of fire research and safety in 1986. I found an interesting, sentence in there. You wrote that perhaps it's fair to say that practice of fire safety is an underdeveloped technology, which was interesting to me to understand, uh, what was the state of development back then. But more interestingly, we also, uh, try to estimate the number of people worldwide doing fire science or fire safety. And
James Quintiere:Okay.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:estimate for us was approximately 150 people in uk, 90 in Japan, 160. And wow, that's, that's, that's one big faculty today there is, uh, the fire science is so much bigger. I wonder how it felt like in, in 1970s or eighties,
James Quintiere:do you think it's bigger?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I think it's, it's much bigger today. I, I think
James Quintiere:Can you name more than 150 people working fire?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:yeah,
James Quintiere:not talking engineers using
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I am pretty sure I could name
James Quintiere:in the US
Wojciech Wegrzynski:in the us I don't know. In Europe it's, it's, it's for sure much bigger.
James Quintiere:Yes. I think Europe has maintained, an activity in fire and I think there's linkages among universities and funding. universities, under eu, hasn't prevailed in the us The center of gravity of people and, and, uh, effort being spent is China.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah. I, I would agree with that. There, we, we know there are these, uh, state key fire laboratory that has like a hundred PhDs in fire. It's an amazing, amazing,
James Quintiere:Yeah. But there's there's a dozen or more schools in China that have fire programs,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:So you would say that, uh, from your perspective, it looks similar in scale, the, the fire science today as it was, 30, 40 years ago.
James Quintiere:I think in China, but I maybe in Europe, but I don't think there's the same integration. I think I A F S S has tried to maintain some of that. but it's not the same thing. I, I cannot remember in the last almost, 20 years, national meeting in the US on fire,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Really?
James Quintiere:than when the people from inter inter flam would come over and had a meeting on the west coast.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:that's unfortunate
James Quintiere:have you recognized any meeting in the US that you wanted to go to in the last 10 years?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I am honest with you. I, I was once on, uh, NFPA Expo and that was amazing.
James Quintiere:Ah-ha. NFPA is not fire research.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, that's what
James Quintiere:It's firemen.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:there. There's, SFP conferences, but that's engineers not signed
James Quintiere:P is not Fire Research. Sf p e kicked out I A F S S. . They, they were one of the founders of I A F S S and kicked us out as secretariat.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
James Quintiere:They were the secretariat. said they didn't wanna be involved anymore. That's how Carol Franks and Interscience got, got the job. Gratefully,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:gratefully,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:IFSS is still, uh, going very
James Quintiere:and, and, the founders would really be happy.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I am more than delighted with, uh, where it's going, and I hope to be more involved with it as well. And, uh, I'm looking forward for the symposium in Tsukuba. We were actually bidding for IAFSS 2026 in Warsaw. So we, we didn't get it awarded, but maybe next time it's
James Quintiere:Maybe next time. Good luck. Yes.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:hope for that. But you are correct. there were, um, meetings at nist, but it was, uh, smaller, uh, conferences, not, not on this magnitude.
James Quintiere:a F was founded with the first meeting at nist. and it had to bring in, support from ISO C I B, the Japanese and nist. When I went to the meeting in the UK that solidified all of this. I went with a message from this management that they would support us. When I came back, they said they would not. So I was on my own to arrange that meeting with Ray Friedman of FM Global and if we lost any money, it would be on us.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:that's crazy. What, what the commitment, you know, fire science is, when you start digging into it, it's, it's a
James Quintiere:There's, there's some politics there.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:there's politics, but there's, it's just a bunch of interesting and interesting people who got there by accident and made li life out of it. And,
James Quintiere:yes. But you see what happened in the US is there was this, NIST had 5 million for funding or 4 million. There was 2 million or 1 million from NSF and academia. That was, that was a large amount of money that would be equivalent to maybe 70 million spent today in the US There's nothing close to that being spent,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:nothing close. And so,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
James Quintiere:and so what happened is you had this mushroom of activity in the early seventies come together, and through the seventies you had people in academia and new hires at nist, like myself, starting to look at fire. A field that no one had ever looked at before, making mistakes, going down paths, learning from each other having great discussions. I mean, there would be meetings three times a year. People would come to nist. Industry would come to NIST because there was another funding from industry.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:And the funding from industry was a penalty. The Federal Trade Commission in the US said you plastic people must spend a million dollars in research for the next three years. the reason for that is you misspoke on your, use and, uh, safety related to fire tests.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:They were saying things like, this thing is, non propagating. this will not sustain fire. They were extrapolating from little tests into the big world, and the Federal Trade Commission called them on that and penalized them. And, and industry that the people involved in that became very interested in trying to do the right thing. But once that was over, it died.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I see.
James Quintiere:And when Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, said anything connected to regulations should die. So the fire program and NIST was, each year eliminated from funding under Reagan. So under eight years of his, presidency year, the fire program was eliminated. and restored by Congress, it was restored in a bipartisan way
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:today, that never could happen. And so after the eighties, the program at atr, if it wasn't for FDS, you never would hear about NIST anymore because the, the, the rest of the work stopped. All of those things that you said, the nice experiments stopped.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:mm-hmm. when I look at the literature, uh, you see that, uh, it has been a very, let's say, powerful, uh, force in the, in the universe of fire, uh, science down a bit than, as you said, with, with the emergence of fds. However, I think the, the CFA s is also an important development, a very important development for me. I think, uh, the experiments on, oil spills and, and fires. This, this was also interesting. What, what I wanted to, uh, go further into is the in this, let's say, This, this era of, possibilities that opened with, uh, the funding being, uh, supported in one way or another. one of your reviews you wrote that the state of fire science can be measured by ability to present consistent and generalized explanations for its, it's phenomena. I wondered in, in 1970, so much was unknown about the fire. I, I wonder how did you view the, even the concept of fire, fire science, how, how did you decide, okay, we're gonna, investigate radiant, uh, ignition, or we're gonna investigate the new lining material for floors or, or we gonna go smoke plumes, or we gonna go compartment fires. So many interesting, things. when you look into the literature, most of them start at this point. For most of them, it was a huge scarcity in knowledge. So everything must have been very, very new at this point. How could you make your mind like what to pursue?
James Quintiere:like I said, when people got started, they made mistakes and they went down different paths. but, what happened is people got involved and they were supported, and they were, they were supported sufficiently so that maybe they didn't have to produce something the first year because the funding was there, right? So it had a, a foundation. eventually people found their path and because, uh, people were involved, there were issues of smoke detectors and detecting fire and saving people. were issues of the rapidly growing fire from a fireman's point of view,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:and maybe that's plastics. There were issues of what the test methods mean and why does this thing spread in this test? What doesn't spread in that test? And so all of these things became question marks for the group assembled. And, even Ralph Long, the, the head of the, the academic program who he later came to, mbs and I talked to him, I said, R Ralph, how come you have four investigators working on, flame spread? I said, shouldn't you just have like one or maybe two? no, no. The more you have, the more you get a discussion, the more you eventually find the truth. Those were the wisest words a young person ever heard. . And so that was the attitude. So you had, on the side, you had four or five people looking at flame spread. had people looking at, plumes and flows.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm
James Quintiere:Uh, you had people starting to look in compartment fires and what does it mean by flashover and what is flashover? And at the same time, there were n experiments going on at NIST were looking at the behavior of floor coverings in corridors
Wojciech Wegrzynski:mm-hmm.
James Quintiere:there was a big fire and the use of floor coverings in, in a corridor, trapped people in their rooms. And so there was, a lot of motivation and, and fm and Harvard linked together. They had a joint program. and they looked at, compartment fires and they tried to unravel what's going on in the compartment fire. So all of these things brought focus to issues in fire. Like what is entrained meant? is the flame this tall? What happens when the flame hits the ceiling? what about a fire on a wall? What about a fire on a ceiling? What about a pool fire? Why, why are the results in literature that say pool fires when they're small, have a high burning rate? And then they go down and then they go back up again when they become big fires or huddle? And Hottel and Emmons struggled with this in the sixties, so there were issues like that, and it was discovery also that from a fire, either from the flame or indirectly from the hot surfaces, Really pushed fire in compartments. So a lot of people started working on this. I mean, you, you had Ed Zukowski at Caltech, uh, looking at Flos, uh, you had Chang Tian who became chancellor of the whole California University system working on radiation. you had Emmons leading the show and eventually steep getting stepped into compartment fires and building his own model. I tried to keep some of that alive in the eighties. But bring people together from France, Japan, and who I hired at nist, people don't talk to each other all the time. So you, you can't get cross-fertilization. Probably, Colleen Wade has looked at this more deeply than most people, and she knows
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, she did mention, uh, she, she had to write some codes for master thesis. And I found it so interesting that you, you had to go such depth to even write your own own codes. But yeah, I, I per, I personally love zone models and, and for me that's, uh, one of the
James Quintiere:well. Well, look, you, you see zone models are very important and they were the essence of the and those experiments you talk about because people focused on phenomenon and said, we need to understand this piece. But then FDS came along and said it could do everything.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:Now, the reason why FDS came along is when Howard Baum came to. in the early seventies, you talk about experiments, but Howard Baum brought in Large Eddie Simulation that was being used in a meteorological world and said, look, in a room fire, you have mostly inviscid flow. You only have friction at the walls, so let's try to get the bulk of this done, let's not worry too much about how we deal with viscus effects. they put in this Smagorinsky thing for, for the turbulent terms. And, so that was the basis of it. and because of the development of the computer, it took baby steps. By the time Kevin McGrain came there, computers were really, really, capable. And so Kevin decided he was gonna everything up. and say, all right, we need a better piece for flame spread. We need a better piece for radiation. And he sought people to put that in there. what you didn't have is now the same cadre of people. you had no one checking this experimentally, or you didn't have more than one person inputting It was not like a group of people focused on how do we put in, viscous effects near the wall? How do we really do radiation with soot? it just got in the code and, Kevin was altruistic in this regard, I think. And, and so if, if FDS became the zone model was for people in the seventies and eighties where they looked the zone models for. How to get more detail about, mixing between the layers or, flow through the opening or something like that. fds I think would, would have a, a better, a more complete following in the experimental world as well as the computer world.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I always considered, zone model more as an empirical thing built through understanding the phenomena behind it, not
James Quintiere:but it's not, it's not empirical.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
James Quintiere:It's, it's not empirical. the mechanics of, doing multiple rooms with flow through doorway, the flow through doorway is handled very accurately in his own model. Alright. The, the assumption that you have uniform temperature in one layer and uniform in a lower layer is reasonable. But may say that's empirical. It's approximation, it's a reasonable approximation. But when you go into a zone model and now say, I'm going to embed a ceiling jet in there,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm,
James Quintiere:y you are embedding good physics in there. When you embed a plume in there with, its, its entrainment. embedding very good experimental results from people like Ed Zukowski and others,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:who accurately measured this stuff and, then developed, like you say, empirical relationships. But they weren't just power laws. They were based on physics.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:An an experiment. Uh, yeah, full scale, ex experiment. That's what's, that's where I see the
James Quintiere:Yes, but it's, but it's based on physics of the phenomena. It's not, I, I'm just gonna plot X versus Y. And if it goes to the 1.3 power, I'll be happy. No, you, you better justify why it's 1.3.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Fantastic. um, you, you've, um, mentioned about all this, um, fascinating. Like, whatever you touched, it seems it, it, it was new and interesting. I would like to talk a little bit more about Flashover, and, and. All the phenomena in, in, in fire guard, but flashover is probably the most interesting one I wanted to understand, like, is something that probably firefighters observe or, however firefighting exists. You could see that sometimes fire is small and sometimes it has, uh, this huge, uh, that, encompasses the whole room, and that it was probably observed in, in, in reality that the, the transition may be very dynamic. I wondered how did the early research into flashover phenomena look like? And like what were you even able to measure? How were you, investigating that? Because for, for me, it's one of the most, uh, beautiful aspects of fire science that, uh,
James Quintiere:Uh,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:that lead to flashover and, uh, how it develops.
James Quintiere:Yes, that was intriguing. And in the early days we would say, look, the temperature was 200 degrees and in the next 10 seconds it went up to 800 degrees.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:So we would say, ah, the flashover must have occurred, at, I, I don't know, 500 degrees Celsius or something like that. And so people would pick a number and they would say, if you get to that temperature, you're, you're gonna go to Flashover. And that was really, really loose. Now, it was useful because it, if you got in that range, you were going to be close to this flashover phenomena. But if you look at what Flashover is, and, and I tried to do this in my later years, but really need his own model to do it, uh, In any case, it's a feedback phenomena. And this was brought up by Phil Thomas, we had a joint paper with Phil Bernie McCaffrey and myself and Matthew Bolen, who was working with Phil. And it's basically feedback and, Mark Palazzi, uh, at the UK had some work done. One of his students, I forget the student's name. So it's a, it's a, instability. It's a feedback phenomena. I, I think Hasemi from Japan looked at it this way too. And it, it could be, dissected more because. Those, those phenomena was basically looking at a, a, a fire not spreading a static fire the feedback back to that fire. And so you would get feedback the fire, the burning rate would go up. The burning rate would cause a increase in temperature. You would get more radiation feedback, and this would bring you to another point. And it's, it's the same as the semi auto ignition, in combustion. It's the same kind of, equations that you could write down. Where in the, in the seminar off case, it, it's the, uh, kinetics of the chemical and, that driving it. in the fire case, it's the radiation causing the, the feedback. So it should still be looked more because if you have flame spread involved and you g get preheating up to a high enough temperature, you can get close to the ignition temperature of the material and then you'll have very rapid spread. So if you look at fires, and I don't know if you have my second edition of Principles of Fire Behavior, there's this collection of pictures there that, I show from tests done at the, a t f laboratory that vividly show what happens when you have a flashover. You, you'll get the feedback, but at the same time you'll get the very rapid spread. And when you get that very rapid spread, the smoke layer drops almost to the floor. and, and now you have a lot of mixing of the air coming in with the smoke you're bringing back to the fire, diluted air. So the fire is not getting that air anymore. So if the fire started in the back of the room, that air has trouble getting to that fire. happens now is that fire virtually goes out and the fire starts moving toward the vent. if you cal use f d s in such calculations, f d s will show that the fire will start moving toward the vent. And what this does is it then leaves patterns on the walls. in the back of the room are soo collected patterns that fire investigators see all the time and try to make sense out of, but haven't fully digested what it means. flashover is rolled up the feedback phenomena, the flame spread, enhancement phenomena, the jumping into a fully developed fire where you, zero oxygen now in the smoke layer a and, even behind these, uh, SUT patterns, they call them, uh, clean burns.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:What you've uh, mentioned, I think it, uh, was observed in a large scale experiment at Cardington and at one of them, and it was recently revisited, I think it was, uh, researchers Xu Dai, who was, uh, doing that.
James Quintiere:Yes, well, there was a man at, in Australia, I forget his name, who showed the so-called traveling fires long time ago, but they occur, if you look at the work, one, one of my PhD students, and if you look at the paper with, Tenzei Mizukami Utiskul and myself, you, will see that we got all of these so-called fires like that and Phil Thomas saw them in, the sixties, if you start a fire in the back of the room it tries to, it gets outta control and jumps into this flashover state and jumps to the front of the room, the flame will move toward the vent.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:And because the room will get so hot, , it will continue to generate, fuel. and I have videos of this where the flame just attaches itself to the vent and there's no fire in the room anymore. P people have, have not, the investigators need to look at this. The researchers need to look at this because this is not fully, engineers need to look at this because,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:James, this is so relevant to today's fire problems where we, uh, see the growth of, of mass timber in buildings where if you bring the discussion about, internal, the compartment fire dynamics in mass timber building, you are often being told that it doesn't affect the internal, because the, fuel produced will, will burn outside. It's not as simple and it's such a beautiful, uh, physics
James Quintiere:but do you know what temperatures you have inside at that point? Those are temperatures that will damage the structure and continue to degrade the st the the wood.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:yes.
James Quintiere:I had a newspaper reporter who said he interviewed a fire scientist and was told that because the wood chars it's protecting itself.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yes, we, we were battling against that on LinkedIn and everywhere, can, but it's so
James Quintiere:do you know how wood burns in, in a fire like that? it burns cyclically. we found this out by accident. I had Margaret doing, a thick piece of wood in a radiant panel, and it, it ignited, it flamed, it burned out. went to glowing char and she left the room, but forgot to shut off the radiant panel. Alright. It continued to glow. The char burned off. When she came back in her data sheet, had recorded an identical second experiment where the wood burned again, with the back to flaming and charring in the same exact way.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah, we, we saw that, uh, we, we were doing a lot of experiments with Mike Spearpoint on, clt, cross laminated timber compartments, and we've seen the second flashover, So definitely interesting. I've asked you about the flashover because it's such a fundamental thing to, fire science. You know, even the, the whole concept of fire resistance is, a post flashover fire concept. You know, we don't care
James Quintiere:Yes, yes. PO post fascia over. Look, people ha for said that problem solved that is not solved. And in addition, if you're dealing with concrete, you better understand the cooling face as well.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Indeed. we are also like looking into cooling phase in, in, in, in mass timber now, as, as well. It's very interesting, uh, stuff.
James Quintiere:yeah, look. I wish there was more people and more support for fire. It, it's really incredible. You know, Japan was one of the stalwarts in Supporting Fire, but they're on the way as well. Uh, I, I don't, I don't know what to say. China to me is closed now because of Covid. I don't hear from those people anymore. but they, they got the support. professor Fan who is now at ING Wa was the founder of, uh, fire Research. worked with Spalding in the uk and he was one of the founders or instigators from China in the I A F S S. some people forget that. and so, I would like to see, you know, from a fire research point of view, more integration around the world,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:with, fire, you know, how many meetings do you have in the uk? Uh, in, in the EU for
Wojciech Wegrzynski:in terms of, of fire science? That's a difficult question because, you know, covid changed the dynamic a lot.
James Quintiere:it certainly did.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, there are a lot of thematical, you know, not a giant symposia, but we have a very good tunneling conferences
James Quintiere:Okay. Yes.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:held by people at RISE and there's a second one in, in Austrian Graz and there's amazing conferences, fires and vehicles. That's also cyclical. Also by, rise, there are Nordic fire safety days, which are very scientific. There's a happening. I actually, I, I
James Quintiere:yeah. I see that from time to time. But, people in the US I think are not plugged into it.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:maybe
James Quintiere:At least, at least.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:we need to replug you In that case,
James Quintiere:Uh, uh, my days are gone. Uh, I've done my last research in batteries and microgravity, and I, I wanted to come back to Flashover, but, COVID, I didn't, I never got covid, but, I think it pushed me into isolation. I was all set to go to a Combustion Institute meeting. Mediterranean conference in Egypt. And then I came down with, uh, some mysterious illness again and it went away, but I had already canceled my trip and so I missed this beautiful meeting on next to the pyramids and uh,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I heard it was pretty, pretty good
James Quintiere:yeah.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:J James, uh, as we are on, on this international, bringing people together, I really wonder how did, this type of collaboration and, and, and this type of, Involvement, interaction with other groups look like in, in, in the seventies, like you, you've mentioned multiple time, Philip Thomas and I guess with David Raba. That was a huge group in the UK back then. There was a very strong, groups in Japan, uh, starting with Professor Kago and, and then, uh, Tanaka a a lot of fantastic H how did the this landscape look back then, and how were you able to interact with them?
James Quintiere:Okay. so one thing was there was ISO and C I B meetings. I see there's probably ISO meetings, but I don't know about C I B anymore. Council International. Phil, Phil Thomas was the convener of both, and he kept that alive and internationally. And so that became a place where people could meet, and Japan would send scientists at those meetings. UK would tend to send scientists to those meetings. Other countries might send regulators to those meetings. I think it's not anymore. I don't know. I've lost touch.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I think ISO TC 92 is still convening. I'm, I'm not a part of it, so I hard, hard for me to tell how these
James Quintiere:Yes. I think they disbanded their engineering group that was supposed to do performance based codes and e established the most accurate equations and. I think a Japanese scientist was working that, and I think they pulled the plug on that so that was an activity. At the same time, this academic activity with 20 grants in the us and so there would always be an annual meeting on that. people were invited internationally from that. So people like Phil Thomas, Japanese, other people in Europe, they were invited. People from industry were invited to see what was going on. So that was that activity. this became the of the grants. . And people like me and others who were in a a, a science role, would collaborate with the, investigators. And so there was this keen interaction between NIST and the academic people, uh, in a collaborative, way. I got to know wonderful people like Howard Emmons, John e and many, many, uh, Jerry Faith many, many more. all the people at fm, Ron Alper, that that did pioneering work. g Cheng Yao on, on the, the, uh, sprinklers. so there, there was, a lot of interaction. at the same time, it was recognized that Japan was very deep in fire. And John Lyons, who took over the Integrated Fire Program, at NBS said we should have, interaction with Japan. It became the U J N R. I forget what it stands for, but essentially it was US Japan, meeting every two years where it would alternate between Japan and the us And we would send a whole bunch of people over to Japan and they would do likewise. and it would be like about 20 people going in each direction. we would have a week of meeting, talking about what we had, done. over that year and integrating it with others that couldn't be there. So, based upon that, when I took over a group in NIST in around 1980, I, my first thing was to invite Tanaka. it was to invite Hasemi later on in the spirit of compartment fires, I invited, uh, Michelle Karta and ser boar from, France. They were involved in this magic code, which was very good. and retired at that time. So I brought Henry Mittler, who was responsible for, cobbling together the Harvard Code. and, and under John Lyons, when he was in charge of, The program. We, we had a hundred and twenty one, a hundred twenty people at NIST involved in fire
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Wow.
James Quintiere:when Reagan started to squeeze us. I think now if you count the number of people in fire at nist, if it's more than 30.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I, I have no idea how many there is, it, it's definitely not close to a hundred as, as you as you were saying that I found, some, um, report from a meeting in 1998, which happened at Tsukuba it seems the next one was supposed to be held in San Antonio in 2000,
James Quintiere:it was. and it was the last meeting of the U J N R the reason for that was the NIST management said we didn't need it anymore.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Mm-hmm.
James Quintiere:and the Japanese have always been very disappointed. if you, talk to Sam Manzelo I don't know if you know He was based in Japan for a while, but he, his employer was nist and they tried to revive U J N R because the scientists in Japan missed it. But by then, most of the academics and fire scientists from NIST were nonexistent anymore.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:that, that's unfortunate that, uh, well, fire Science is a story of, accident people coming into profession
James Quintiere:and How, how could NIST know, John Lyons was head of the fire program, but then John Lyons became, head of all nist. So he was the of nist. He was the only not reappointed, after the new president took office. And the reason for that is the name change, NMB S to nist. The new administration put tons of money into Nmb, nbs and changed this name from National Bureau of Standards to National Institute for Standards and Technology. added technology to it, which they added a lot of money where NIST would give money to industry to try to promote in the spirit of commerce, better industry in the us. And I think John Lyons fought that. And as a result, he was kicked out.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Ah, politics. Uh,
James Quintiere:Yes sir. Politics.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I rarely see good things coming out of politics.
James Quintiere:Nixon was responsible for the fire program in the US
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And, now, to finalize this, this part about international collaboration, can you also tell me about, if F Ss and how it came to life in, in middle of eighties?
James Quintiere:because of the last five years in the seventies and the interactions internationally and discussions with FM Global and Phil Thomas, we begin to realize that in international activity was really, really needed. And the highest for fire was in the combustion. Institute. , but Combustion Institute, people downplayed fire. So Ray Freeman, who had been president of the Combustion Institute at one point said, that's not the place for us.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay.
James Quintiere:And so, in the early eighties, we started talking about what can we do? Could we have our own section? And the Combustion Institute, they said no. Irv Glassman and the Combustion Institute said he wanted us in there. Irv was a, another contributor. The people at Princeton were,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:was Combustion Institute? Very big back then. Now it's, it's huge.
James Quintiere:it was, the biggest thing around
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay.
James Quintiere:and, it had a, a lot of, advanced fields fire was looked upon as, primitive.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's.
James Quintiere:but a lot of, but a lot of good papers got in there.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:It's funny as you say that because I always have the quote of Hottel that, among, uh, along life sciences, it may be the most complex phenomena of all.
James Quintiere:yes. It, it is, you use fds, right?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Uh, I'm actually Ansys, but I'm very familiar with fds. Yes,
James Quintiere:Alright, so it deals with the turbulent flame.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:yes,
James Quintiere:I was at a meeting in the Canary Islands of the Combustion Institute,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay.
James Quintiere:Mediterranean section, and they have a lady who does high powered computations, rec, numerical simulation, and then they had an experimentalist. and they were both looking at turbulent flames. And the numerical person, I think she could only get about five seconds. and the other guy, actually his lab was being shut down they thought combustion was too crude. Then laboratory is in one of these fission and fusion laboratories. combustion is now passe. Fusion is
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay. That's
James Quintiere:so, anyway, they both concluded that a turbulent flame is made up of a pre-mixed flame, ignition and ignition, and some diffusion. And so it really portrayed the flame in terms of real physics and chemistry. at all, like it's being modeled in these turbulent models. + but, but I, I f ss. So what, there is, and how, maybe fire is primitive and,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
James Quintiere:and, and combustion is different. And, and now I heard that fire almost took over the last Combustion Institute meeting. And it was mostly from China.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I on the Mediterranean the, the one that you said you missed, there was a fire section all I think for all days. It was amazing. a lot of fire research for sure.
James Quintiere:yes. There was good, I'm, I wanted to see the pyramids. so there was this recognition by people like Ray Fried. Phil Thomas, myself, Pat Pegani from Berkeley, we should have some international, meeting like the Combustion Institute at a high standard so we would, get more freedom. And, so we had discussions through the eighties and Thomas was very sensitive to and culture, and he broached the issue with and, Akita in Japan. Uh, they blessed it. And, then we had a big meeting. It was either ISO or c i b meeting at Bo and, Kawagoe was there, Thomas was there, Ray Friedman was there. I was there and we organized the first meeting and that's when this said to me, you, you'll be fully supported. But when I came back home, they said we changed their minds.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Let me see.
James Quintiere:So that's how I A F S S got started. It was a, a normal response to people wanting to interaction internationally at a high academic level. wanted to, get, more than what the Combustion Institute was giving us. Cause that was the really only place S F P E no sense of research at that time. and probably still doesn't, they're really users then, but they really.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:there is research foundation nowadays, but it's not that SFP research, it's just grant,
James Quintiere:no, that's N F P A. Kathy Ahman was the research. The, but the research foundation really became a vehicle for industry to get things done through N F P A that they wanted done.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Okay.
James Quintiere:Alright. I'm not saying it's bad,
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
James Quintiere:but one time. and Kathleen Norman told me this, and she presented it at a meeting. they hired us. They, they, they looked, they took a look at some work and a scientist gave them a new path and the committee wouldn't take it. but, I'm just saying. the N F P A foundation is a good thing. They do good work, but, it doesn't have the same, connection with the rest of the world where there would be integration and feedback and discussion. It's, it's kind of a closed thing. just like your activities on tunnel fires is a closed It's not like around the world saying, oh, there's this big conference on tunnel fires. We should go.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:yes. this fragment like in, in, I think in Europe,
James Quintiere:Fragmentation is Yes.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:we have the I F Ss, uh, still, uh, going there. Hopefully we will rejuvenate the European IFS symposium. There's Asia Oceania Symposium that's very big.
James Quintiere:yeah. I mean, Hirano started the Asian thing and he started that. He felt that Asia would get the short stick
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm,
James Quintiere:and in some ways he's, he was r but the Asian oceanic thing was really, really very good. And you know, people like Haran were not pioneers. phlegm spread pool fires. You probably see the work of Koseki that was Haran student definitive work on large pool fires. don't see that anymore.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:That's why I, I, when I see, uh, the research from seventies, from eighties, you know, today having, being a part of a fire laboratory, I see your research in, in seventies when you've burned like 50 rooms with Stackler and that's, I find it amazing. I would love to repeat that. okay. It might sound like, uh, odd, but it hard. But we're not doing that today. We don't have funding. We don't
James Quintiere:no, but, the measurements were because to measure those flows and to use Pitot tubes, which really were bidirectional probes, and to understand how, how that bidirectional probe worked and to have Bernie McCaffrey in the background. Calibrated them and understood that and wrote a paper with Gunner Heskes that who
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Yeah.
James Quintiere:actually, invented the bidirectional probe have all of that thing going on in the background, immense support to that work. And by the way, when, I had worked on, on FDS to reproduce that stuff, it does not do a perfect job. And the only way you can do it is to, have cells far outside the room.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:Hmm.
James Quintiere:so there's a paper on that in the, in the literature. And my student who was from China would have preferred to see FDS come out better. So he and another student, recast those results. and did it with, a grid far outside the room and improved it to some, some extent, but that activity is very thin. in the time when Steckler was doing this, would've been embraced and discussed. Now it's lost in the literature. okay. I'm probably talking too much.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:you enjoying it? At least
James Quintiere:Yeah, I mean, it's, it's nice to go to the past, but it's frustrating not to see what excited you, excited.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:really
James Quintiere:it.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:and it, it's, it, it was a different time.
James Quintiere:Why can't it be again?
Wojciech Wegrzynski:What a question how, for the end of, of the episode. Let's make it, let's, let's, well,
James Quintiere:Yeah.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:it is not just up to
James Quintiere:No, it's not up to us.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:but you know what I, I can tell you there is a lot of brilliant, passionate people this industry. Maybe a little scattered around the world, maybe in, in different places,
James Quintiere:I, see that and I see, I see Europe is strong in that
Wojciech Wegrzynski:And, uh, hopefully, maybe we will rekindle the passion. Also okay. Um, so thank you very much for, this interview. It was, a pleasure.
James Quintiere:I hope you don't have to, excerpt some of this stuff on.
Wojciech Wegrzynski:I will, no worries.
James Quintiere:Okay.
Wojciech Węgrzyński:And this is for today. The episode has ended quite abruptly, but there's a reason for it. We kind of changed the topic and went for another hour with James on the physics of experiments, carried at nist you know Stecklers room experiments. Plume experiments, Bernie McCaffrey. All the flashover experts that led to the creation of MQH. Correlation. Oh, such a great stuff. How they've measured it. And I must tell it, these people were advanced in what they were doing. It's just simply fascinating and I hope we will someday. Reach their level of technical understanding. And their level of collaboration. And that second thing is something that's really comes up from this As you can see with a lot of nostalgia. Jim is talking about all the meetings between the American and Japanese scientists. He said that they were having a BI annual meeting for a week. Can you imagine? Signed is just going for a week. So more to discuss science. We don't have time for that anymore. But th that that's, that's kind of stupid without this cross-pollination without this. Exchange of knowledge, exchange of ideas there. There, there cannot be any growth. There are going to be any significant growth or maybe. Maybe there can, but it's, it's just, so much less probable I wish. We have more of these discussions. Coming up. That's a, one of the reasons I really enjoy this podcast because I get to talk with our scientists from across the world, all institutions. Everyone is welcome in here. And I hope at least with this, one way. knowledge transfer. I can. Affect some of this cross-pollination of ideas across the world may be maybe that's, uh, one of the ways to do this in the modern world where everyone, everyone is out of time and everyone is struggling. Anyway, I really hope we could slow down. Uh, talk a little more and maybe get some more meaningful fire science and the app. If we get our research funded that. Also help. Well, that's another, that's another thing it's kind of funny that, you learned that, the golden era of, uh, fire science was triggered by. An error in statistics to which the government responded. Creating funding that, that let's do a break choose in our, in our field. I hope we don't have to result to having wrong statistics to phone firesides. I just, I just really hope someone. Really did. In the vast lot in that I guess the world is changing and fire is being recognized as one of the emerging issues. So one day. The funding will be here. And I hope on the day we talk more. We exchange. Our knowledge a little bit more. We work together. And together we build a little more fire, safe world. And that's it for today, as you've heard, there's another episode with James Quintiere coming up next week. So, I guess you will be looking up for that one. I surely am. Thank you for being here with me today. See you here next Wednesday by.
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