093 - The story of the golden era for the US fire science with James Quintiere

Transcript

WEBVTT 00:00:00.419 --> 00:00:01.080 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Hello, everybody. 00:00:01.139 --> 00:00:03.990 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Welcome to the Fire Science Show episode 93. 00:00:04.182 --> 00:00:08.195 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>This was kind of supposed to be episode 100, given the caliber of my guests today. 00:00:08.226 --> 00:00:13.795 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What I thought it's unfair towards you to keep this episode hidden for eight more weeks. 00:00:13.795 --> 00:00:14.545 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I'm. 00:00:14.785 --> 00:00:20.076 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'm just going to publish it and I hope you enjoy it as much as if it was published as an episode hundreds. 00:00:20.556 --> 00:00:25.525 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And the guest is one of the biggest names in the Fire Science it's professor James Quintiere. 00:00:25.865 --> 00:00:30.216 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You most likely connect him with, uh, his work at the University of Maryland. 00:00:30.666 --> 00:00:44.375 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:00:44.856 --> 00:00:52.956 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Where he participated in a great, maybe even the greatest in history, experimental, uh, fire science periods. 00:00:53.375 --> 00:00:57.469 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In the world and, uh, that's exactly what I wanted to learn from him. 00:00:57.469 --> 00:01:01.469 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What What does it feel like making research in seventies, eighties? 00:01:01.469 --> 00:01:07.638 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What was it like touching the new fundamental things in fire that were undiscovered at that point? 00:01:07.698 --> 00:01:08.418 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Think about it. 00:01:08.799 --> 00:01:18.159 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Flashover phenomenon, the zones, the, uh, All the things related to the modes of heat transfer, flaming bingemans, stuff like that. 00:01:18.368 --> 00:01:19.929 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Amazing amazing time. 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:21.879 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Uh, to be a fire researcher. 00:01:22.179 --> 00:01:23.558 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I also wanted to learn. 00:01:23.649 --> 00:01:32.259 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Uh, what people were involved at the time, how the collaboration looked like how they've developed,, why things like IAFSS were formed. 00:01:32.259 --> 00:01:34.058 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So, so this is the backbone. 00:01:34.358 --> 00:01:36.129 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Off today's episode. 00:01:36.459 --> 00:01:42.429 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Kind of US centered because James is giving his personal experiences. 00:01:42.789 --> 00:01:44.259 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Being an American. 00:01:44.649 --> 00:01:49.269 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Scientists, but I think a very important lesson for the whole of fire science. 00:01:49.748 --> 00:01:56.259 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>As between the lines, you can read out why these periods was such fruitful. 00:01:56.262 --> 00:01:58.808 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>To the discoveries in fire science. 00:01:59.432 --> 00:02:00.506 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Great news for you. 00:02:00.566 --> 00:02:11.066 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:02:11.575 --> 00:02:13.855 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So look up forward for that one. 00:02:14.276 --> 00:02:15.145 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And today. 00:02:15.415 --> 00:02:16.406 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Please enjoy. 00:02:16.705 --> 00:02:20.075 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>As I discussed with professor James Quintiere. 00:02:20.096 --> 00:02:24.656 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Uh, the history and maybe the golden era of American fire movement. 00:02:48.227 --> 00:02:53.300 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Before I let you in full the episode with James Quintiere I wanted to reflect on something. 00:02:53.580 --> 00:03:00.393 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:03:00.872 --> 00:03:05.706 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And, The second thing was the connection between the scientists and how they spread information. 00:03:06.037 --> 00:03:10.086 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I hope to achieve the second thing through this podcast. 00:03:10.597 --> 00:03:14.977 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And it's possible also because I have a supporter that supports me. 00:03:15.276 --> 00:03:15.997 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In doing that. 00:03:15.997 --> 00:03:17.826 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And that's the OFR Consultants. 00:03:18.073 --> 00:03:22.453 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I am hugely thankful for OFR two going here, along with me. 00:03:22.723 --> 00:03:32.413 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:03:32.443 --> 00:03:33.462 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And then so much more. 00:03:33.673 --> 00:03:34.513 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Gang to happen. 00:03:34.543 --> 00:03:35.383 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So, yeah. 00:03:35.413 --> 00:03:35.893 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you. 00:03:35.893 --> 00:03:36.592 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you OFR. 00:03:36.883 --> 00:03:47.173 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And if you had no chance to know them yet, OFR is a multi award winning independent consultancy, dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges. 00:03:47.682 --> 00:03:50.592 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's the UKs leading fire risk consultancy. 00:03:50.592 --> 00:04:00.312 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>and OFR's globally . Established team as develop reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise with colleagues working across the planets to protect people. 00:04:00.582 --> 00:04:02.203 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Property and environment. 00:04:02.729 --> 00:04:11.795 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:04:11.806 --> 00:04:12.893 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Futures this year. 00:04:13.582 --> 00:04:24.742 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:04:25.312 --> 00:04:27.562 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>OFR, thanks for being a patron of this show. 00:04:28.052 --> 00:04:31.173 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And they are helping me create this content free for everyone. 00:04:31.622 --> 00:04:34.202 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And now your well-deserved episode with James 00:04:35.321 --> 00:04:36.086 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello everybody. 00:04:36.086 --> 00:04:37.966 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Welcome to the Fire Science Show. 00:04:38.185 --> 00:04:41.766 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm today with Professor James Quintiere James. 00:04:41.766 --> 00:04:43.125 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Nice to have you in the show. 00:04:43.362 --> 00:04:45.163 <v James Quintiere>Very, very happy to be here. 00:04:45.603 --> 00:04:54.632 <v 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. 00:04:54.779 --> 00:05:02.012 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, professor Quintiere, so I would like to start with how did you end up being a fire scientist? 00:05:02.122 --> 00:05:12.170 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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? 00:05:12.709 --> 00:05:17.389 <v James Quintiere>Uh, like many who go down paths after they graduate from. 00:05:18.355 --> 00:05:19.886 <v James Quintiere>High school or college. 00:05:20.266 --> 00:05:21.536 <v James Quintiere>it's accidental. 00:05:22.718 --> 00:05:25.415 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You would not believe how many people say that in the podcast. 00:05:25.446 --> 00:05:27.125 <v James Quintiere>No, it's true, it's true. 00:05:27.125 --> 00:05:32.930 <v James Quintiere>We go down the path and if we went down another one, we never quite know what would happen. 00:05:33.505 --> 00:05:35.480 <v James Quintiere>Phil Thomas told me the same thing. 00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:46.759 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:05:46.759 --> 00:05:49.752 <v James Quintiere>And, and that's how I came to be involved in. 00:05:50.177 --> 00:05:52.365 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's, around the time when. 00:05:52.752 --> 00:06:09.452 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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? 00:06:09.826 --> 00:06:10.180 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:06:10.185 --> 00:06:12.401 <v James Quintiere>It was emerging at that time. 00:06:12.490 --> 00:06:15.071 <v James Quintiere>There were several things I think that helped it. 00:06:15.341 --> 00:06:20.511 <v James Quintiere>Um, there was a great deal of interest in safety in the sixties. 00:06:20.961 --> 00:06:26.024 <v James Quintiere>There was a man named Ralph Nader, who focused a lot on, car safety. 00:06:26.470 --> 00:06:26.605 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:06:26.641 --> 00:06:37.985 <v 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. 00:06:38.464 --> 00:06:40.235 <v James Quintiere>Actually, it was a mistake. 00:06:40.327 --> 00:06:45.944 <v James Quintiere>They were counting motor vehicle fires as, uh, 10 times the amount. 00:06:46.411 --> 00:06:50.725 <v James Quintiere>and, so the government decided it was gonna put some money into this. 00:06:50.725 --> 00:06:53.004 <v James Quintiere>President Nixon appointed a committee. 00:06:53.574 --> 00:06:59.555 <v James Quintiere>Hottel and Emmons from Harvard were advocates for fire for a long time. 00:07:00.024 --> 00:07:09.867 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:07:10.151 --> 00:07:13.151 <v James Quintiere>Uh, that money went to the National Science Foundation. 00:07:13.577 --> 00:07:22.064 <v James Quintiere>At the same time, the fire service passed, some legislation and, uh, that responsibility went to NBS or NIST. 00:07:22.069 --> 00:07:23.901 <v James Quintiere>Now, also NIST now. 00:07:23.901 --> 00:07:26.721 <v James Quintiere>Had a fire program that went back to the. 00:07:26.935 --> 00:07:32.406 <v James Quintiere>Early days of 1920, almost, after a big fire in Baltimore. 00:07:32.555 --> 00:07:42.142 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:07:42.509 --> 00:07:51.490 <v James Quintiere>And in, in 1970, it was turning to the survival of people in fire or people in cars or things like that. 00:07:51.839 --> 00:08:00.139 <v James Quintiere>And there was another act passed that said fabrics were becoming more flammable because they weren't made of cotton and wool. 00:08:00.139 --> 00:08:04.523 <v James Quintiere>Now they were made of polyester and b nylon and things like that. 00:08:05.182 --> 00:08:07.463 <v James Quintiere>And so issues were popping up. 00:08:07.805 --> 00:08:10.656 <v James Quintiere>and at NBS there were three programs. 00:08:10.661 --> 00:08:19.504 <v James Quintiere>One, the old fire program, the fire service related program, and the, um, a fabric, flammability issue. 00:08:19.901 --> 00:08:37.273 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:08:37.807 --> 00:08:45.057 <v James Quintiere>2 million in the early seventies, could fund 20 solid academic projects. 00:08:45.207 --> 00:08:54.410 <v James Quintiere>So he brought some of the best people in combustion and he transfer in flu mechanics from academia into fire. 00:08:54.990 --> 00:09:00.327 <v James Quintiere>eventually those programs merged in the early seventies in nist. 00:09:01.298 --> 00:09:08.677 <v James Quintiere>they brought in John Lyons to head the, that Unified program and the NSF program was brought in there too. 00:09:09.577 --> 00:09:13.077 <v James Quintiere>So John Lyons really, was a visionary. 00:09:13.107 --> 00:09:15.118 <v James Quintiere>He wrote his own book on fire. 00:09:15.600 --> 00:09:22.908 <v James Quintiere>He wanted to learn, he was a, PhD combustion chemist from industry on retardants. 00:09:23.118 --> 00:09:26.077 <v James Quintiere>And, he really pushed to learn more. 00:09:26.347 --> 00:09:31.597 <v James Quintiere>And, and that those were the seeds of the early fire movement. 00:09:32.100 --> 00:09:38.304 <v James Quintiere>And with that, someone like John Lyons said, we need to, connect to the British and the Japanese. 00:09:38.754 --> 00:09:44.900 <v James Quintiere>And, that really was the start of, uh, international kind of, cadre. 00:09:45.321 --> 00:09:48.770 <v James Quintiere>to put their resources together to learn. 00:09:49.041 --> 00:09:58.640 <v 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. 00:09:58.740 --> 00:09:59.130 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:09:59.130 --> 00:10:08.835 <v James Quintiere>Under Ingberg at the time, Alex Robertson was headed that program, but NS had politically, uh, lot of changes. 00:10:09.315 --> 00:10:15.957 <v 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. 00:10:15.957 --> 00:10:17.565 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The, the buildings, the factories. 00:10:18.014 --> 00:10:27.003 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was, I guess the same when the sprinklers were invented even earlier, how factory mutual became, uh, a thing, how UL was funded. 00:10:27.215 --> 00:10:45.860 <v 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. 00:10:46.363 --> 00:10:55.807 <v James Quintiere>so they've sponsored at the same, just bef before the seventies in the late sixties, they sponsored a program at. 00:10:55.884 --> 00:11:14.654 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:11:15.174 --> 00:11:17.445 <v James Quintiere>John de Ris was one of those people. 00:11:17.794 --> 00:11:28.158 <v 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. 00:11:28.158 --> 00:11:30.278 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What, uh, what a time to start a career 00:11:30.541 --> 00:11:42.227 <v 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. 00:11:42.942 --> 00:11:47.707 <v James Quintiere>And so the, the safety in cars was really the driver there. 00:11:47.900 --> 00:11:56.258 <v James Quintiere>and, when I got involved in fire in the early seventies, far as the structure of buildings was concerned, that was passe. 00:11:56.538 --> 00:11:57.028 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:11:57.067 --> 00:11:59.048 <v James Quintiere>didn't need to work on that anymore. 00:11:59.447 --> 00:12:01.248 <v James Quintiere>And then came to World Trade Center. 00:12:01.580 --> 00:12:02.740 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>that's very interesting. 00:12:02.740 --> 00:12:22.732 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:12:23.150 --> 00:12:28.649 <v James Quintiere>Well, If you work in an institute, I think, that deals with test methods and regulations. 00:12:29.256 --> 00:12:31.086 <v James Quintiere>regulations are not always followed 00:12:31.601 --> 00:12:31.721 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:12:32.047 --> 00:12:33.548 <v James Quintiere>even though there's test methods. 00:12:33.873 --> 00:12:36.273 <v James Quintiere>You had Grenfell in the Uk. 00:12:37.052 --> 00:12:45.403 <v James Quintiere>If the simple test of, combustibility was applied to the outside wall, material never would've been on there. 00:12:45.677 --> 00:12:59.110 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:12:59.115 --> 00:13:05.136 <v James Quintiere>That fell down in 102 minutes, had doubled the insulation as the other building that fell in 56. 00:13:05.563 --> 00:13:06.803 <v James Quintiere>You could do a simple. 00:13:07.317 --> 00:13:13.697 <v James Quintiere>Structural engineering calculation of the insulation on steel, which is almost an outer brake and result 00:13:14.142 --> 00:13:14.562 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:13:14.687 --> 00:13:15.256 <v James Quintiere>predictive. 00:13:15.884 --> 00:13:31.102 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:13:31.442 --> 00:13:43.596 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:13:43.986 --> 00:13:46.496 <v James Quintiere>A total wrong conclusion for Fire Re. 00:13:46.793 --> 00:13:47.517 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>well, uh, 00:13:47.518 --> 00:13:50.128 <v James Quintiere>I'm sorry to bring in this political issue. 00:13:50.283 --> 00:13:53.398 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I've actually been warned about, uh, 00:13:53.937 --> 00:13:54.687 <v James Quintiere>Y y yes. 00:13:54.687 --> 00:14:09.282 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:14:09.745 --> 00:14:12.738 <v James Quintiere>Anyway, we, will, we continue on. 00:14:13.057 --> 00:14:13.477 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yes. 00:14:13.918 --> 00:14:14.597 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you. 00:14:15.548 --> 00:14:19.912 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I'm, really curious about those years of, fire science. 00:14:19.942 --> 00:14:26.695 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I always, uh, somehow about the seventies, maybe the eighties as some sort of golden era fire research. 00:14:26.695 --> 00:14:35.971 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:14:36.111 --> 00:14:44.412 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:14:44.674 --> 00:14:46.955 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I found an interesting, sentence in there. 00:14:47.134 --> 00:14:58.534 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:14:58.794 --> 00:15:07.375 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But more interestingly, we also, uh, try to estimate the number of people worldwide doing fire science or fire safety. 00:15:07.754 --> 00:15:08.174 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And 00:15:08.259 --> 00:15:08.750 <v James Quintiere>Okay. 00:15:09.294 --> 00:15:15.105 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>estimate for us was approximately 150 people in uk, 90 in Japan, 160. 00:15:15.485 --> 00:15:21.384 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And wow, that's, that's, that's one big faculty today there is, uh, the fire science is so much bigger. 00:15:21.615 --> 00:15:25.065 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I wonder how it felt like in, in 1970s or eighties, 00:15:25.297 --> 00:15:26.644 <v James Quintiere>do you think it's bigger? 00:15:26.659 --> 00:15:28.309 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think it's, it's much bigger today. 00:15:28.340 --> 00:15:29.029 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I think 00:15:29.884 --> 00:15:33.274 <v James Quintiere>Can you name more than 150 people working fire? 00:15:33.450 --> 00:15:33.940 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>yeah, 00:15:33.995 --> 00:15:36.125 <v James Quintiere>not talking engineers using 00:15:36.298 --> 00:15:38.135 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I am pretty sure I could name 00:15:38.307 --> 00:15:39.082 <v James Quintiere>in the US 00:15:39.299 --> 00:15:40.570 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>in the us I don't know. 00:15:40.570 --> 00:15:42.529 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In Europe it's, it's, it's for sure much bigger. 00:15:42.634 --> 00:15:42.934 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:15:42.934 --> 00:15:50.706 <v James Quintiere>I think Europe has maintained, an activity in fire and I think there's linkages among universities and funding. 00:15:50.913 --> 00:16:01.634 <v James Quintiere>universities, under eu, hasn't prevailed in the us The center of gravity of people and, and, uh, effort being spent is China. 00:16:01.802 --> 00:16:02.109 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:16:02.109 --> 00:16:03.308 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I would agree with that. 00:16:03.308 --> 00:16:09.001 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There, we, we know there are these, uh, state key fire laboratory that has like a hundred PhDs in fire. 00:16:09.111 --> 00:16:10.481 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's an amazing, amazing, 00:16:10.826 --> 00:16:11.006 <v James Quintiere>Yeah. 00:16:11.187 --> 00:16:16.960 <v James Quintiere>But there's there's a dozen or more schools in China that have fire programs, 00:16:17.580 --> 00:16:24.970 <v 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. 00:16:25.073 --> 00:16:30.710 <v James Quintiere>I think in China, but I maybe in Europe, but I don't think there's the same integration. 00:16:31.605 --> 00:16:35.948 <v James Quintiere>I think I A F S S has tried to maintain some of that. 00:16:35.948 --> 00:16:37.414 <v James Quintiere>but it's not the same thing. 00:16:37.466 --> 00:16:44.181 <v James Quintiere>I, I cannot remember in the last almost, 20 years, national meeting in the US on fire, 00:16:44.181 --> 00:16:44.767 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Really? 00:16:44.971 --> 00:16:50.024 <v James Quintiere>than when the people from inter inter flam would come over and had a meeting on the west coast. 00:16:50.236 --> 00:16:51.116 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>that's unfortunate 00:16:51.528 --> 00:16:56.554 <v James Quintiere>have you recognized any meeting in the US that you wanted to go to in the last 10 years? 00:16:56.870 --> 00:16:57.789 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I am honest with you. 00:16:58.428 --> 00:17:02.308 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I was once on, uh, NFPA Expo and that was amazing. 00:17:02.568 --> 00:17:03.019 <v James Quintiere>Ah-ha. 00:17:03.379 --> 00:17:05.628 <v James Quintiere>NFPA is not fire research. 00:17:05.659 --> 00:17:06.179 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, that's what 00:17:06.259 --> 00:17:07.308 <v James Quintiere>It's firemen. 00:17:07.398 --> 00:17:07.959 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>there. 00:17:07.959 --> 00:17:10.499 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There's, SFP conferences, but that's engineers not signed 00:17:10.898 --> 00:17:12.249 <v James Quintiere>P is not Fire Research. 00:17:12.548 --> 00:17:15.729 <v James Quintiere>Sf p e kicked out I A F S S. 00:17:16.150 --> 00:17:22.654 <v James Quintiere>. They, they were one of the founders of I A F S S and kicked us out as secretariat. 00:17:22.994 --> 00:17:23.484 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:17:23.525 --> 00:17:25.025 <v James Quintiere>They were the secretariat. 00:17:25.775 --> 00:17:28.055 <v James Quintiere>said they didn't wanna be involved anymore. 00:17:28.444 --> 00:17:32.884 <v James Quintiere>That's how Carol Franks and Interscience got, got the job. 00:17:33.365 --> 00:17:34.144 <v James Quintiere>Gratefully, 00:17:34.605 --> 00:17:34.724 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:17:34.984 --> 00:17:35.224 <v James Quintiere>gratefully, 00:17:35.724 --> 00:17:38.255 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>IFSS is still, uh, going very 00:17:39.625 --> 00:17:42.365 <v James Quintiere>and, and, the founders would really be happy. 00:17:42.463 --> 00:17:48.554 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I am more than delighted with, uh, where it's going, and I hope to be more involved with it as well. 00:17:48.554 --> 00:17:52.023 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, uh, I'm looking forward for the symposium in Tsukuba. 00:17:52.203 --> 00:17:55.614 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We were actually bidding for IAFSS 2026 in Warsaw. 00:17:55.634 --> 00:17:59.273 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So we, we didn't get it awarded, but maybe next time it's 00:17:59.318 --> 00:18:00.298 <v James Quintiere>Maybe next time. 00:18:00.409 --> 00:18:01.098 <v James Quintiere>Good luck. 00:18:01.159 --> 00:18:01.578 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:18:01.713 --> 00:18:02.473 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>hope for that. 00:18:02.973 --> 00:18:04.153 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But you are correct. 00:18:04.314 --> 00:18:11.473 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>there were, um, meetings at nist, but it was, uh, smaller, uh, conferences, not, not on this magnitude. 00:18:11.854 --> 00:18:14.913 <v James Quintiere>a F was founded with the first meeting at nist. 00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:21.844 <v James Quintiere>and it had to bring in, support from ISO C I B, the Japanese and nist. 00:18:22.433 --> 00:18:26.970 <v James Quintiere>When I went to the meeting in the UK that solidified all of this. 00:18:26.970 --> 00:18:31.440 <v James Quintiere>I went with a message from this management that they would support us. 00:18:31.829 --> 00:18:33.779 <v James Quintiere>When I came back, they said they would not. 00:18:34.099 --> 00:18:41.874 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:18:42.017 --> 00:18:42.946 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>that's crazy. 00:18:43.144 --> 00:18:49.307 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What, what the commitment, you know, fire science is, when you start digging into it, it's, it's a 00:18:49.487 --> 00:18:51.576 <v James Quintiere>There's, there's some politics there. 00:18:52.027 --> 00:18:59.634 <v 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. 00:18:59.634 --> 00:19:00.034 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, 00:19:00.088 --> 00:19:00.388 <v James Quintiere>yes. 00:19:00.394 --> 00:19:08.308 <v James Quintiere>But you see what happened in the US is there was this, NIST had 5 million for funding or 4 million. 00:19:08.788 --> 00:19:13.019 <v James Quintiere>There was 2 million or 1 million from NSF and academia. 00:19:13.618 --> 00:19:24.959 <v James Quintiere>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, 00:19:25.199 --> 00:19:25.542 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:19:25.682 --> 00:19:26.761 <v James Quintiere>nothing close. 00:19:27.241 --> 00:19:28.051 <v James Quintiere>And so, 00:19:28.882 --> 00:19:29.241 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:19:29.484 --> 00:19:46.269 <v 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. 00:19:47.048 --> 00:19:58.041 <v James Quintiere>A field that no one had ever looked at before, making mistakes, going down paths, learning from each other having great discussions. 00:19:58.041 --> 00:20:00.682 <v James Quintiere>I mean, there would be meetings three times a year. 00:20:01.162 --> 00:20:02.692 <v James Quintiere>People would come to nist. 00:20:02.721 --> 00:20:08.271 <v James Quintiere>Industry would come to NIST because there was another funding from industry. 00:20:08.666 --> 00:20:08.826 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:20:08.932 --> 00:20:11.961 <v James Quintiere>And the funding from industry was a penalty. 00:20:12.211 --> 00:20:22.291 <v James Quintiere>The Federal Trade Commission in the US said you plastic people must spend a million dollars in research for the next three years. 00:20:23.011 --> 00:20:30.765 <v James Quintiere>the reason for that is you misspoke on your, use and, uh, safety related to fire tests. 00:20:31.180 --> 00:20:31.339 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:20:31.424 --> 00:20:36.011 <v James Quintiere>They were saying things like, this thing is, non propagating. 00:20:36.518 --> 00:20:38.537 <v James Quintiere>this will not sustain fire. 00:20:38.813 --> 00:20:47.344 <v James Quintiere>They were extrapolating from little tests into the big world, and the Federal Trade Commission called them on that and penalized them. 00:20:47.344 --> 00:20:55.114 <v James Quintiere>And, and industry that the people involved in that became very interested in trying to do the right thing. 00:20:55.834 --> 00:20:58.263 <v James Quintiere>But once that was over, it died. 00:20:58.375 --> 00:20:58.904 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I see. 00:20:59.146 --> 00:21:07.319 <v James Quintiere>And when Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, said anything connected to regulations should die. 00:21:07.650 --> 00:21:14.826 <v James Quintiere>So the fire program and NIST was, each year eliminated from funding under Reagan. 00:21:14.826 --> 00:21:21.980 <v James Quintiere>So under eight years of his, presidency year, the fire program was eliminated. 00:21:22.219 --> 00:21:27.973 <v James Quintiere>and restored by Congress, it was restored in a bipartisan way 00:21:28.388 --> 00:21:28.546 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:21:28.584 --> 00:21:30.864 <v James Quintiere>today, that never could happen. 00:21:31.233 --> 00:21:43.094 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:21:43.223 --> 00:21:46.973 <v James Quintiere>All of those things that you said, the nice experiments stopped. 00:21:47.153 --> 00:21:47.763 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>mm-hmm. 00:21:47.957 --> 00:22:03.483 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:22:03.483 --> 00:22:08.923 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>However, I think the, the CFA s is also an important development, a very important development for me. 00:22:09.394 --> 00:22:13.900 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think, uh, the experiments on, oil spills and, and fires. 00:22:13.900 --> 00:22:14.940 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This, this was also interesting. 00:22:14.940 --> 00:22:28.694 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:22:29.575 --> 00:22:38.855 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:22:39.305 --> 00:22:44.419 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I wondered in, in 1970, so much was unknown about the fire. 00:22:44.419 --> 00:23:01.585 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:23:01.795 --> 00:23:03.259 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So many interesting, things. 00:23:04.259 --> 00:23:07.298 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>when you look into the literature, most of them start at this point. 00:23:07.769 --> 00:23:10.589 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>For most of them, it was a huge scarcity in knowledge. 00:23:10.589 --> 00:23:14.109 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So everything must have been very, very new at this point. 00:23:14.250 --> 00:23:16.589 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How could you make your mind like what to pursue? 00:23:16.761 --> 00:23:22.281 <v James Quintiere>like I said, when people got started, they made mistakes and they went down different paths. 00:23:22.731 --> 00:23:37.464 <v James Quintiere>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? 00:23:37.464 --> 00:23:39.041 <v James Quintiere>So it had a, a foundation. 00:23:39.479 --> 00:23:49.644 <v James Quintiere>eventually people found their path and because, uh, people were involved, there were issues of smoke detectors and detecting fire and saving people. 00:23:50.380 --> 00:23:55.369 <v James Quintiere>were issues of the rapidly growing fire from a fireman's point of view, 00:23:55.525 --> 00:23:55.644 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:23:55.970 --> 00:23:57.680 <v James Quintiere>and maybe that's plastics. 00:23:57.969 --> 00:24:04.163 <v James Quintiere>There were issues of what the test methods mean and why does this thing spread in this test? 00:24:04.163 --> 00:24:06.084 <v James Quintiere>What doesn't spread in that test? 00:24:06.376 --> 00:24:12.374 <v James Quintiere>And so all of these things became question marks for the group assembled. 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:26.250 <v James Quintiere>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? 00:24:26.460 --> 00:24:29.609 <v James Quintiere>I said, shouldn't you just have like one or maybe two? 00:24:30.509 --> 00:24:30.960 <v James Quintiere>no, no. 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:36.390 <v James Quintiere>The more you have, the more you get a discussion, the more you eventually find the truth. 00:24:36.733 --> 00:24:40.153 <v James Quintiere>Those were the wisest words a young person ever heard. 00:24:40.859 --> 00:24:42.763 <v James Quintiere>. And so that was the attitude. 00:24:42.769 --> 00:24:48.394 <v James Quintiere>So you had, on the side, you had four or five people looking at flame spread. 00:24:49.203 --> 00:24:52.554 <v James Quintiere>had people looking at, plumes and flows. 00:24:52.953 --> 00:24:53.074 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm 00:24:53.273 --> 00:25:00.983 <v James Quintiere>Uh, you had people starting to look in compartment fires and what does it mean by flashover and what is flashover? 00:25:01.237 --> 00:25:09.727 <v James Quintiere>And at the same time, there were n experiments going on at NIST were looking at the behavior of floor coverings in corridors 00:25:09.876 --> 00:25:10.487 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>mm-hmm. 00:25:10.777 --> 00:25:18.519 <v James Quintiere>there was a big fire and the use of floor coverings in, in a corridor, trapped people in their rooms. 00:25:18.970 --> 00:25:25.176 <v James Quintiere>And so there was, a lot of motivation and, and fm and Harvard linked together. 00:25:25.297 --> 00:25:27.067 <v James Quintiere>They had a joint program. 00:25:27.886 --> 00:25:33.525 <v James Quintiere>and they looked at, compartment fires and they tried to unravel what's going on in the compartment fire. 00:25:34.005 --> 00:25:38.865 <v James Quintiere>So all of these things brought focus to issues in fire. 00:25:38.865 --> 00:25:41.144 <v James Quintiere>Like what is entrained meant? 00:25:42.015 --> 00:25:43.605 <v James Quintiere>is the flame this tall? 00:25:43.964 --> 00:25:46.454 <v James Quintiere>What happens when the flame hits the ceiling? 00:25:46.865 --> 00:25:48.724 <v James Quintiere>what about a fire on a wall? 00:25:48.755 --> 00:25:50.674 <v James Quintiere>What about a fire on a ceiling? 00:25:51.154 --> 00:25:52.744 <v James Quintiere>What about a pool fire? 00:25:53.194 --> 00:26:00.005 <v James Quintiere>Why, why are the results in literature that say pool fires when they're small, have a high burning rate? 00:26:00.065 --> 00:26:06.394 <v James Quintiere>And then they go down and then they go back up again when they become big fires or huddle? 00:26:06.394 --> 00:26:25.900 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:26:26.230 --> 00:26:29.380 <v James Quintiere>So a lot of people started working on this. 00:26:29.380 --> 00:26:42.849 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:26:43.574 --> 00:26:51.720 <v James Quintiere>you had Emmons leading the show and eventually steep getting stepped into compartment fires and building his own model. 00:26:52.108 --> 00:26:54.926 <v James Quintiere>I tried to keep some of that alive in the eighties. 00:26:54.957 --> 00:27:04.057 <v James Quintiere>But bring people together from France, Japan, and who I hired at nist, people don't talk to each other all the time. 00:27:04.803 --> 00:27:07.460 <v James Quintiere>So you, you can't get cross-fertilization. 00:27:08.179 --> 00:27:14.622 <v James Quintiere>Probably, Colleen Wade has looked at this more deeply than most people, and she knows 00:27:14.932 --> 00:27:19.194 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, she did mention, uh, she, she had to write some codes for master thesis. 00:27:19.194 --> 00:27:25.694 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I found it so interesting that you, you had to go such depth to even write your own own codes. 00:27:25.994 --> 00:27:31.058 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But yeah, I, I per, I personally love zone models and, and for me that's, uh, one of the 00:27:31.189 --> 00:27:31.459 <v James Quintiere>well. 00:27:31.519 --> 00:27:47.825 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:27:48.066 --> 00:27:51.451 <v James Quintiere>But then FDS came along and said it could do everything. 00:27:51.961 --> 00:27:52.076 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:27:52.128 --> 00:27:56.088 <v James Quintiere>Now, the reason why FDS came along is when Howard Baum came to. 00:27:57.124 --> 00:28:12.336 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:28:12.500 --> 00:28:23.273 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:28:24.114 --> 00:28:28.344 <v James Quintiere>they put in this Smagorinsky thing for, for the turbulent terms. 00:28:29.037 --> 00:28:31.193 <v James Quintiere>And, so that was the basis of it. 00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:36.470 <v James Quintiere>and because of the development of the computer, it took baby steps. 00:28:36.916 --> 00:28:41.859 <v James Quintiere>By the time Kevin McGrain came there, computers were really, really, capable. 00:28:42.140 --> 00:28:46.104 <v James Quintiere>And so Kevin decided he was gonna everything up. 00:28:46.307 --> 00:28:49.984 <v James Quintiere>and say, all right, we need a better piece for flame spread. 00:28:49.984 --> 00:28:52.984 <v James Quintiere>We need a better piece for radiation. 00:28:53.615 --> 00:28:56.015 <v James Quintiere>And he sought people to put that in there. 00:28:56.914 --> 00:29:01.828 <v James Quintiere>what you didn't have is now the same cadre of people. 00:29:02.234 --> 00:29:16.028 <v James Quintiere>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? 00:29:16.509 --> 00:29:18.999 <v James Quintiere>How do we really do radiation with soot? 00:29:19.555 --> 00:29:24.384 <v James Quintiere>it just got in the code and, Kevin was altruistic in this regard, I think. 00:29:25.045 --> 00:29:36.281 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:29:36.771 --> 00:29:45.318 <v James Quintiere>How to get more detail about, mixing between the layers or, flow through the opening or something like that. 00:29:45.838 --> 00:29:55.239 <v James Quintiere>fds I think would, would have a, a better, a more complete following in the experimental world as well as the computer world. 00:29:55.453 --> 00:30:02.821 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I always considered, zone model more as an empirical thing built through understanding the phenomena behind it, not 00:30:02.884 --> 00:30:04.684 <v James Quintiere>but it's not, it's not empirical. 00:30:04.910 --> 00:30:06.160 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:06.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Of course. 00:30:06.724 --> 00:30:08.434 <v James Quintiere>It's, it's not empirical. 00:30:08.878 --> 00:30:18.934 <v James Quintiere>the mechanics of, doing multiple rooms with flow through doorway, the flow through doorway is handled very accurately in his own model. 00:30:19.835 --> 00:30:20.285 <v James Quintiere>Alright. 00:30:20.704 --> 00:30:27.785 <v James Quintiere>The, the assumption that you have uniform temperature in one layer and uniform in a lower layer is reasonable. 00:30:27.845 --> 00:30:29.914 <v James Quintiere>But may say that's empirical. 00:30:29.974 --> 00:30:33.618 <v James Quintiere>It's approximation, it's a reasonable approximation. 00:30:33.984 --> 00:30:39.805 <v James Quintiere>But when you go into a zone model and now say, I'm going to embed a ceiling jet in there, 00:30:40.299 --> 00:30:40.420 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm, 00:30:40.470 --> 00:30:42.868 <v James Quintiere>y you are embedding good physics in there. 00:30:42.868 --> 00:30:46.409 <v James Quintiere>When you embed a plume in there with, its, its entrainment. 00:30:47.308 --> 00:30:53.489 <v James Quintiere>embedding very good experimental results from people like Ed Zukowski and others, 00:30:53.973 --> 00:30:54.094 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:30:54.255 --> 00:31:02.055 <v James Quintiere>who accurately measured this stuff and, then developed, like you say, empirical relationships. 00:31:02.059 --> 00:31:04.545 <v James Quintiere>But they weren't just power laws. 00:31:04.545 --> 00:31:06.164 <v James Quintiere>They were based on physics. 00:31:06.490 --> 00:31:07.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>An an experiment. 00:31:07.759 --> 00:31:10.319 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, yeah, full scale, ex experiment. 00:31:10.349 --> 00:31:12.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's what's, that's where I see the 00:31:12.599 --> 00:31:15.690 <v James Quintiere>Yes, but it's, but it's based on physics of the phenomena. 00:31:15.990 --> 00:31:19.170 <v James Quintiere>It's not, I, I'm just gonna plot X versus Y. 00:31:19.500 --> 00:31:23.099 <v James Quintiere>And if it goes to the 1.3 power, I'll be happy. 00:31:23.490 --> 00:31:26.970 <v James Quintiere>No, you, you better justify why it's 1.3. 00:31:27.202 --> 00:31:27.980 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Fantastic. 00:31:28.320 --> 00:31:32.891 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>um, you, you've, um, mentioned about all this, um, fascinating. 00:31:32.891 --> 00:31:37.171 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like, whatever you touched, it seems it, it, it was new and interesting. 00:31:37.320 --> 00:31:40.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would like to talk a little bit more about Flashover, and, and. 00:31:40.719 --> 00:31:54.558 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:31:54.739 --> 00:32:07.353 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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. 00:32:08.079 --> 00:32:14.289 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I wondered how did the early research into flashover phenomena look like? 00:32:14.670 --> 00:32:18.269 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And like what were you even able to measure? 00:32:18.269 --> 00:32:20.720 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How were you, investigating that? 00:32:20.720 --> 00:32:25.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because for, for me, it's one of the most, uh, beautiful aspects of fire science that, uh, 00:32:26.474 --> 00:32:26.825 <v James Quintiere>Uh, 00:32:27.079 --> 00:32:29.839 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>that lead to flashover and, uh, how it develops. 00:32:30.573 --> 00:32:32.583 <v James Quintiere>Yes, that was intriguing. 00:32:33.482 --> 00:32:45.063 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:32:45.383 --> 00:32:45.803 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:32:45.813 --> 00:32:54.797 <v 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. 00:32:55.247 --> 00:33:02.738 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:33:03.208 --> 00:33:06.538 <v James Quintiere>And that was really, really loose. 00:33:07.407 --> 00:33:14.922 <v James Quintiere>Now, it was useful because it, if you got in that range, you were going to be close to this flashover phenomena. 00:33:15.231 --> 00:33:28.607 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:33:28.667 --> 00:33:39.738 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:33:40.030 --> 00:33:47.167 <v James Quintiere>And it's basically feedback and, Mark Palazzi, uh, at the UK had some work done. 00:33:47.228 --> 00:33:49.508 <v James Quintiere>One of his students, I forget the student's name. 00:33:49.938 --> 00:33:52.548 <v James Quintiere>So it's a, it's a, instability. 00:33:52.553 --> 00:33:54.228 <v James Quintiere>It's a feedback phenomena. 00:33:54.751 --> 00:33:57.770 <v James Quintiere>I, I think Hasemi from Japan looked at it this way too. 00:33:58.401 --> 00:34:01.998 <v James Quintiere>And it, it could be, dissected more because. 00:34:02.195 --> 00:34:11.786 <v James Quintiere>Those, those phenomena was basically looking at a, a, a fire not spreading a static fire the feedback back to that fire. 00:34:12.326 --> 00:34:17.139 <v James Quintiere>And so you would get feedback the fire, the burning rate would go up. 00:34:17.619 --> 00:34:20.860 <v James Quintiere>The burning rate would cause a increase in temperature. 00:34:20.880 --> 00:34:26.530 <v James Quintiere>You would get more radiation feedback, and this would bring you to another point. 00:34:26.559 --> 00:34:32.456 <v James Quintiere>And it's, it's the same as the semi auto ignition, in combustion. 00:34:32.485 --> 00:34:36.463 <v James Quintiere>It's the same kind of, equations that you could write down. 00:34:36.583 --> 00:34:44.510 <v James Quintiere>Where in the, in the seminar off case, it, it's the, uh, kinetics of the chemical and, that driving it. 00:34:45.559 --> 00:34:50.682 <v James Quintiere>in the fire case, it's the radiation causing the, the feedback. 00:34:51.132 --> 00:35:07.500 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:35:08.250 --> 00:35:27.922 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:35:28.521 --> 00:35:33.802 <v James Quintiere>You, you'll get the feedback, but at the same time you'll get the very rapid spread. 00:35:34.702 --> 00:35:38.961 <v James Quintiere>And when you get that very rapid spread, the smoke layer drops almost to the floor. 00:35:39.659 --> 00:35:47.632 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:35:47.827 --> 00:35:50.824 <v James Quintiere>So the fire is not getting that air anymore. 00:35:50.824 --> 00:35:56.259 <v James Quintiere>So if the fire started in the back of the room, that air has trouble getting to that fire. 00:35:57.128 --> 00:36:03.411 <v James Quintiere>happens now is that fire virtually goes out and the fire starts moving toward the vent. 00:36:03.838 --> 00:36:11.742 <v James Quintiere>if you cal use f d s in such calculations, f d s will show that the fire will start moving toward the vent. 00:36:12.702 --> 00:36:17.110 <v James Quintiere>And what this does is it then leaves patterns on the walls. 00:36:17.262 --> 00:36:29.487 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:36:30.003 --> 00:36:51.282 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:36:51.628 --> 00:37:07.324 <v 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. 00:37:07.853 --> 00:37:47.900 <v 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. 00:37:48.309 --> 00:37:48.469 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:37:48.590 --> 00:37:54.427 <v James Quintiere>And because the room will get so hot, , it will continue to generate, fuel. 00:37:54.597 --> 00:38:01.932 <v James Quintiere>and I have videos of this where the flame just attaches itself to the vent and there's no fire in the room anymore. 00:38:02.163 --> 00:38:06.543 <v James Quintiere>P people have, have not, the investigators need to look at this. 00:38:07.023 --> 00:38:13.610 <v James Quintiere>The researchers need to look at this because this is not fully, engineers need to look at this because, 00:38:14.519 --> 00:38:36.413 <v 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. 00:38:36.762 --> 00:38:40.213 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not as simple and it's such a beautiful, uh, physics 00:38:40.443 --> 00:38:44.072 <v James Quintiere>but do you know what temperatures you have inside at that point? 00:38:44.367 --> 00:38:50.222 <v James Quintiere>Those are temperatures that will damage the structure and continue to degrade the st the the wood. 00:38:50.382 --> 00:38:50.802 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>yes. 00:38:50.972 --> 00:39:01.112 <v 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. 00:39:01.112 --> 00:39:06.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yes, we, we were battling against that on LinkedIn and everywhere, can, but it's so 00:39:06.179 --> 00:39:09.179 <v James Quintiere>do you know how wood burns in, in a fire like that? 00:39:09.487 --> 00:39:11.646 <v James Quintiere>it burns cyclically. 00:39:12.112 --> 00:39:13.927 <v James Quintiere>we found this out by accident. 00:39:13.987 --> 00:39:23.983 <v James Quintiere>I had Margaret doing, a thick piece of wood in a radiant panel, and it, it ignited, it flamed, it burned out. 00:39:24.266 --> 00:39:31.503 <v James Quintiere>went to glowing char and she left the room, but forgot to shut off the radiant panel. 00:39:31.992 --> 00:39:32.443 <v James Quintiere>Alright. 00:39:32.922 --> 00:39:34.782 <v James Quintiere>It continued to glow. 00:39:34.967 --> 00:39:36.536 <v James Quintiere>The char burned off. 00:39:36.563 --> 00:39:49.643 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:39:50.108 --> 00:40:01.632 <v 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. 00:40:01.632 --> 00:40:07.387 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I've asked you about the flashover because it's such a fundamental thing to, fire science. 00:40:07.387 --> 00:40:12.945 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You know, even the, the whole concept of fire resistance is, a post flashover fire concept. 00:40:12.945 --> 00:40:13.945 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You know, we don't care 00:40:13.945 --> 00:40:14.994 <v James Quintiere>Yes, yes. 00:40:14.994 --> 00:40:16.434 <v James Quintiere>PO post fascia over. 00:40:16.885 --> 00:40:21.985 <v James Quintiere>Look, people ha for said that problem solved that is not solved. 00:40:22.465 --> 00:40:29.155 <v James Quintiere>And in addition, if you're dealing with concrete, you better understand the cooling face as well. 00:40:29.382 --> 00:40:29.992 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Indeed. 00:40:30.130 --> 00:40:35.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>we are also like looking into cooling phase in, in, in, in mass timber now, as, as well. 00:40:35.469 --> 00:40:37.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's very interesting, uh, stuff. 00:40:37.925 --> 00:40:38.922 <v James Quintiere>yeah, look. 00:40:39.407 --> 00:40:42.994 <v James Quintiere>I wish there was more people and more support for fire. 00:40:43.054 --> 00:40:44.974 <v James Quintiere>It, it's really incredible. 00:40:45.295 --> 00:40:51.538 <v James Quintiere>You know, Japan was one of the stalwarts in Supporting Fire, but they're on the way as well. 00:40:52.248 --> 00:40:54.644 <v James Quintiere>Uh, I, I don't, I don't know what to say. 00:40:54.882 --> 00:40:59.135 <v James Quintiere>China to me is closed now because of Covid. 00:40:59.465 --> 00:41:01.534 <v James Quintiere>I don't hear from those people anymore. 00:41:01.827 --> 00:41:04.432 <v James Quintiere>but they, they got the support. 00:41:04.708 --> 00:41:11.788 <v James Quintiere>professor Fan who is now at ING Wa was the founder of, uh, fire Research. 00:41:12.418 --> 00:41:21.181 <v James Quintiere>worked with Spalding in the uk and he was one of the founders or instigators from China in the I A F S S. 00:41:21.512 --> 00:41:22.862 <v James Quintiere>some people forget that. 00:41:23.387 --> 00:41:30.900 <v James Quintiere>and so, I would like to see, you know, from a fire research point of view, more integration around the world, 00:41:31.034 --> 00:41:31.454 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:41:31.577 --> 00:41:36.306 <v James Quintiere>with, fire, you know, how many meetings do you have in the uk? 00:41:36.577 --> 00:41:38.856 <v James Quintiere>Uh, in, in the EU for 00:41:39.211 --> 00:41:40.922 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>in terms of, of fire science? 00:41:41.307 --> 00:41:45.117 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a difficult question because, you know, covid changed the dynamic a lot. 00:41:45.273 --> 00:41:46.472 <v James Quintiere>it certainly did. 00:41:46.788 --> 00:41:54.724 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, there are a lot of thematical, you know, not a giant symposia, but we have a very good tunneling conferences 00:41:55.463 --> 00:41:55.954 <v James Quintiere>Okay. 00:41:56.074 --> 00:41:56.284 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:41:56.393 --> 00:42:04.264 <v 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. 00:42:04.574 --> 00:42:05.983 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's also cyclical. 00:42:05.983 --> 00:42:12.487 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Also by, rise, there are Nordic fire safety days, which are very scientific. 00:42:12.737 --> 00:42:14.567 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There's a happening. 00:42:14.567 --> 00:42:15.487 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I actually, I, I 00:42:15.641 --> 00:42:15.822 <v James Quintiere>yeah. 00:42:15.822 --> 00:42:17.592 <v James Quintiere>I see that from time to time. 00:42:17.592 --> 00:42:20.271 <v James Quintiere>But, people in the US I think are not plugged into it. 00:42:20.320 --> 00:42:20.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>maybe 00:42:20.885 --> 00:42:21.715 <v James Quintiere>At least, at least. 00:42:22.250 --> 00:42:24.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>we need to replug you In that case, 00:42:24.755 --> 00:42:26.579 <v James Quintiere>Uh, uh, my days are gone. 00:42:26.668 --> 00:42:40.402 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:42:40.759 --> 00:42:44.179 <v James Quintiere>I was all set to go to a Combustion Institute meeting. 00:42:44.284 --> 00:42:46.773 <v James Quintiere>Mediterranean conference in Egypt. 00:42:47.554 --> 00:43:00.130 <v James Quintiere>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, 00:43:00.309 --> 00:43:02.230 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I heard it was pretty, pretty good 00:43:02.929 --> 00:43:03.420 <v James Quintiere>yeah. 00:43:03.570 --> 00:43:24.844 <v 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. 00:43:24.844 --> 00:43:27.164 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That was a huge group in the UK back then. 00:43:27.405 --> 00:43:42.161 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>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? 00:43:42.639 --> 00:43:43.094 <v James Quintiere>Okay. 00:43:43.119 --> 00:43:48.389 <v James Quintiere>so one thing was there was ISO and C I B meetings. 00:43:48.809 --> 00:43:52.858 <v James Quintiere>I see there's probably ISO meetings, but I don't know about C I B anymore. 00:43:53.108 --> 00:43:54.389 <v James Quintiere>Council International. 00:43:55.039 --> 00:44:03.481 <v James Quintiere>Phil, Phil Thomas was the convener of both, and he kept that alive and internationally. 00:44:04.081 --> 00:44:11.449 <v James Quintiere>And so that became a place where people could meet, and Japan would send scientists at those meetings. 00:44:12.469 --> 00:44:15.889 <v James Quintiere>UK would tend to send scientists to those meetings. 00:44:16.061 --> 00:44:19.692 <v James Quintiere>Other countries might send regulators to those meetings. 00:44:20.235 --> 00:44:23.474 <v James Quintiere>I think it's not anymore. 00:44:23.480 --> 00:44:24.164 <v James Quintiere>I don't know. 00:44:24.284 --> 00:44:25.335 <v James Quintiere>I've lost touch. 00:44:25.364 --> 00:44:28.014 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I, I think ISO TC 92 is still convening. 00:44:28.114 --> 00:44:32.335 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm, I'm not a part of it, so I hard, hard for me to tell how these 00:44:32.534 --> 00:44:33.074 <v James Quintiere>Yes. 00:44:33.259 --> 00:44:43.695 <v James Quintiere>I think they disbanded their engineering group that was supposed to do performance based codes and e established the most accurate equations and. 00:44:43.960 --> 00:44:50.177 <v James Quintiere>I think a Japanese scientist was working that, and I think they pulled the plug on that so that was an activity. 00:44:50.237 --> 00:45:01.313 <v James Quintiere>At the same time, this academic activity with 20 grants in the us and so there would always be an annual meeting on that. 00:45:01.619 --> 00:45:05.063 <v James Quintiere>people were invited internationally from that. 00:45:05.063 --> 00:45:10.943 <v James Quintiere>So people like Phil Thomas, Japanese, other people in Europe, they were invited. 00:45:11.393 --> 00:45:15.353 <v James Quintiere>People from industry were invited to see what was going on. 00:45:15.824 --> 00:45:18.293 <v James Quintiere>So that was that activity. 00:45:18.733 --> 00:45:23.054 <v James Quintiere>this became the of the grants. 00:45:23.351 --> 00:45:31.204 <v James Quintiere>. And people like me and others who were in a a, a science role, would collaborate with the, investigators. 00:45:31.264 --> 00:45:38.889 <v James Quintiere>And so there was this keen interaction between NIST and the academic people, uh, in a collaborative, way. 00:45:38.949 --> 00:45:48.237 <v James Quintiere>I got to know wonderful people like Howard Emmons, John e and many, many, uh, Jerry Faith many, many more. 00:45:48.293 --> 00:45:52.755 <v James Quintiere>all the people at fm, Ron Alper, that that did pioneering work. 00:45:53.715 --> 00:45:57.476 <v James Quintiere>g Cheng Yao on, on the, the, uh, sprinklers. 00:45:57.623 --> 00:46:00.213 <v James Quintiere>so there, there was, a lot of interaction. 00:46:00.599 --> 00:46:06.510 <v James Quintiere>at the same time, it was recognized that Japan was very deep in fire. 00:46:07.170 --> 00:46:16.447 <v James Quintiere>And John Lyons, who took over the Integrated Fire Program, at NBS said we should have, interaction with Japan. 00:46:16.606 --> 00:46:19.304 <v James Quintiere>It became the U J N R. 00:46:19.726 --> 00:46:35.306 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:46:35.769 --> 00:46:39.820 <v James Quintiere>and it would be like about 20 people going in each direction. 00:46:40.659 --> 00:46:45.927 <v James Quintiere>we would have a week of meeting, talking about what we had, done. 00:46:46.242 --> 00:46:50.592 <v James Quintiere>over that year and integrating it with others that couldn't be there. 00:46:50.952 --> 00:47:00.331 <v James Quintiere>So, based upon that, when I took over a group in NIST in around 1980, I, my first thing was to invite Tanaka. 00:47:00.929 --> 00:47:11.652 <v James Quintiere>it was to invite Hasemi later on in the spirit of compartment fires, I invited, uh, Michelle Karta and ser boar from, France. 00:47:11.681 --> 00:47:15.351 <v James Quintiere>They were involved in this magic code, which was very good. 00:47:15.545 --> 00:47:17.945 <v James Quintiere>and retired at that time. 00:47:17.949 --> 00:47:23.614 <v James Quintiere>So I brought Henry Mittler, who was responsible for, cobbling together the Harvard Code. 00:47:24.211 --> 00:47:28.699 <v James Quintiere>and, and under John Lyons, when he was in charge of, The program. 00:47:28.759 --> 00:47:34.074 <v James Quintiere>We, we had a hundred and twenty one, a hundred twenty people at NIST involved in fire 00:47:34.186 --> 00:47:34.606 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Wow. 00:47:34.639 --> 00:47:37.838 <v James Quintiere>when Reagan started to squeeze us. 00:47:38.164 --> 00:47:44.818 <v James Quintiere>I think now if you count the number of people in fire at nist, if it's more than 30. 00:47:44.967 --> 00:48:01.626 <v 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, 00:48:01.851 --> 00:48:02.391 <v James Quintiere>it was. 00:48:02.452 --> 00:48:11.121 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:48:11.606 --> 00:48:12.208 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Mm-hmm. 00:48:12.409 --> 00:48:16.103 <v James Quintiere>and the Japanese have always been very disappointed. 00:48:16.697 --> 00:48:32.856 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:48:33.393 --> 00:48:40.693 <v James Quintiere>But by then, most of the academics and fire scientists from NIST were nonexistent anymore. 00:48:40.824 --> 00:48:47.976 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>that, that's unfortunate that, uh, well, fire Science is a story of, accident people coming into profession 00:48:48.067 --> 00:48:57.206 <v 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. 00:48:57.514 --> 00:48:59.373 <v James Quintiere>So he was the of nist. 00:48:59.420 --> 00:49:05.273 <v James Quintiere>He was the only not reappointed, after the new president took office. 00:49:05.409 --> 00:49:09.579 <v James Quintiere>And the reason for that is the name change, NMB S to nist. 00:49:10.019 --> 00:49:21.900 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:49:22.619 --> 00:49:35.277 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:38.090 <v James Quintiere>And I think John Lyons fought that. 00:49:38.150 --> 00:49:40.159 <v James Quintiere>And as a result, he was kicked out. 00:49:40.402 --> 00:49:41.472 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Ah, politics. 00:49:41.481 --> 00:49:41.831 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, 00:49:41.954 --> 00:49:42.465 <v James Quintiere>Yes sir. 00:49:42.525 --> 00:49:43.137 <v James Quintiere>Politics. 00:49:43.242 --> 00:49:46.172 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I rarely see good things coming out of politics. 00:49:46.577 --> 00:49:50.222 <v James Quintiere>Nixon was responsible for the fire program in the US 00:49:50.460 --> 00:49:59.514 <v 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? 00:49:59.750 --> 00:50:17.039 <v 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. 00:50:17.847 --> 00:50:21.536 <v James Quintiere>And the highest for fire was in the combustion. 00:50:21.536 --> 00:50:22.197 <v James Quintiere>Institute. 00:50:22.827 --> 00:50:25.661 <v James Quintiere>, but Combustion Institute, people downplayed fire. 00:50:26.057 --> 00:50:33.764 <v James Quintiere>So Ray Freeman, who had been president of the Combustion Institute at one point said, that's not the place for us. 00:50:33.954 --> 00:50:34.445 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:50:34.485 --> 00:50:39.731 <v James Quintiere>And so, in the early eighties, we started talking about what can we do? 00:50:39.762 --> 00:50:41.202 <v James Quintiere>Could we have our own section? 00:50:41.452 --> 00:50:44.628 <v James Quintiere>And the Combustion Institute, they said no. 00:50:44.934 --> 00:50:48.744 <v James Quintiere>Irv Glassman and the Combustion Institute said he wanted us in there. 00:50:49.072 --> 00:50:51.288 <v James Quintiere>Irv was a, another contributor. 00:50:51.288 --> 00:50:52.907 <v James Quintiere>The people at Princeton were, 00:50:54.742 --> 00:50:55.717 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>was Combustion Institute? 00:50:55.717 --> 00:50:56.717 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Very big back then. 00:50:56.717 --> 00:50:57.797 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Now it's, it's huge. 00:50:57.978 --> 00:51:00.467 <v James Quintiere>it was, the biggest thing around 00:51:01.117 --> 00:51:01.608 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:51:01.728 --> 00:51:09.036 <v James Quintiere>and, it had a, a lot of, advanced fields fire was looked upon as, primitive. 00:51:09.461 --> 00:51:09.952 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's. 00:51:10.217 --> 00:51:13.817 <v James Quintiere>but a lot of, but a lot of good papers got in there. 00:51:14.266 --> 00:51:22.369 <v 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. 00:51:22.813 --> 00:51:23.226 <v James Quintiere>yes. 00:51:23.286 --> 00:51:25.976 <v James Quintiere>It, it is, you use fds, right? 00:51:26.246 --> 00:51:29.237 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, I'm actually Ansys, but I'm very familiar with fds. 00:51:29.237 --> 00:51:29.396 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yes, 00:51:29.487 --> 00:51:31.976 <v James Quintiere>Alright, so it deals with the turbulent flame. 00:51:32.036 --> 00:51:32.277 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>yes, 00:51:32.577 --> 00:51:36.297 <v James Quintiere>I was at a meeting in the Canary Islands of the Combustion Institute, 00:51:36.317 --> 00:51:36.806 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:51:36.806 --> 00:51:46.079 <v James Quintiere>Mediterranean section, and they have a lady who does high powered computations, rec, numerical simulation, and then they had an experimentalist. 00:51:46.706 --> 00:51:48.916 <v James Quintiere>and they were both looking at turbulent flames. 00:51:49.146 --> 00:51:53.052 <v James Quintiere>And the numerical person, I think she could only get about five seconds. 00:51:53.322 --> 00:51:59.869 <v James Quintiere>and the other guy, actually his lab was being shut down they thought combustion was too crude. 00:51:59.869 --> 00:52:06.349 <v James Quintiere>Then laboratory is in one of these fission and fusion laboratories. 00:52:07.159 --> 00:52:09.199 <v James Quintiere>combustion is now passe. 00:52:09.204 --> 00:52:10.219 <v James Quintiere>Fusion is 00:52:10.454 --> 00:52:10.945 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:52:11.695 --> 00:52:12.304 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's 00:52:12.590 --> 00:52:22.842 <v 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. 00:52:23.137 --> 00:52:29.500 <v James Quintiere>And so it really portrayed the flame in terms of real physics and chemistry. 00:52:30.340 --> 00:52:33.615 <v James Quintiere>at all, like it's being modeled in these turbulent models. 00:52:34.485 --> 00:52:36.045 <v James Quintiere>+ but, but I, I f ss. 00:52:36.106 --> 00:52:39.681 <v James Quintiere>So what, there is, and how, maybe fire is primitive and, 00:52:39.876 --> 00:52:40.036 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:52:40.371 --> 00:52:42.831 <v James Quintiere>and, and combustion is different. 00:52:42.831 --> 00:52:48.521 <v James Quintiere>And, and now I heard that fire almost took over the last Combustion Institute meeting. 00:52:48.581 --> 00:52:50.141 <v James Quintiere>And it was mostly from China. 00:52:50.518 --> 00:52:56.088 <v 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. 00:52:56.088 --> 00:52:56.849 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was amazing. 00:52:57.101 --> 00:52:58.590 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>a lot of fire research for sure. 00:52:59.045 --> 00:52:59.331 <v James Quintiere>yes. 00:52:59.331 --> 00:53:03.096 <v James Quintiere>There was good, I'm, I wanted to see the pyramids. 00:53:03.550 --> 00:53:07.235 <v James Quintiere>so there was this recognition by people like Ray Fried. 00:53:07.956 --> 00:53:21.465 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:53:21.804 --> 00:53:36.717 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:53:37.014 --> 00:53:38.215 <v James Quintiere>Uh, they blessed it. 00:53:38.601 --> 00:53:40.905 <v James Quintiere>And, then we had a big meeting. 00:53:40.934 --> 00:53:50.487 <v James Quintiere>It was either ISO or c i b meeting at Bo and, Kawagoe was there, Thomas was there, Ray Friedman was there. 00:53:51.038 --> 00:53:58.170 <v James Quintiere>I was there and we organized the first meeting and that's when this said to me, you, you'll be fully supported. 00:53:58.170 --> 00:54:01.501 <v James Quintiere>But when I came back home, they said we changed their minds. 00:54:01.635 --> 00:54:02.376 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let me see. 00:54:02.507 --> 00:54:05.538 <v James Quintiere>So that's how I A F S S got started. 00:54:05.538 --> 00:54:15.923 <v James Quintiere>It was a, a normal response to people wanting to interaction internationally at a high academic level. 00:54:16.521 --> 00:54:21.608 <v James Quintiere>wanted to, get, more than what the Combustion Institute was giving us. 00:54:22.088 --> 00:54:28.983 <v James Quintiere>Cause that was the really only place S F P E no sense of research at that time. 00:54:29.052 --> 00:54:33.873 <v James Quintiere>and probably still doesn't, they're really users then, but they really. 00:54:33.998 --> 00:54:39.518 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>there is research foundation nowadays, but it's not that SFP research, it's just grant, 00:54:39.934 --> 00:54:42.161 <v James Quintiere>no, that's N F P A. 00:54:42.161 --> 00:54:44.490 <v James Quintiere>Kathy Ahman was the research. 00:54:44.710 --> 00:54:53.221 <v James Quintiere>The, but the research foundation really became a vehicle for industry to get things done through N F P A that they wanted done. 00:54:53.306 --> 00:54:53.710 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:54:53.710 --> 00:54:54.054 <v James Quintiere>Alright. 00:54:54.173 --> 00:54:55.434 <v James Quintiere>I'm not saying it's bad, 00:54:55.494 --> 00:54:55.983 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:54:56.003 --> 00:54:56.934 <v James Quintiere>but one time. 00:54:56.954 --> 00:55:00.313 <v James Quintiere>and Kathleen Norman told me this, and she presented it at a meeting. 00:55:00.753 --> 00:55:01.543 <v James Quintiere>they hired us. 00:55:01.594 --> 00:55:09.393 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:55:09.811 --> 00:55:11.143 <v James Quintiere>but, I'm just saying. 00:55:11.338 --> 00:55:14.248 <v James Quintiere>the N F P A foundation is a good thing. 00:55:14.398 --> 00:55:24.465 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:55:24.471 --> 00:55:26.925 <v James Quintiere>It's, it's kind of a closed thing. 00:55:27.523 --> 00:55:37.175 <v James Quintiere>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. 00:55:37.175 --> 00:55:37.996 <v James Quintiere>We should go. 00:55:38.516 --> 00:55:38.936 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>yes. 00:55:39.172 --> 00:55:41.663 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>this fragment like in, in, I think in Europe, 00:55:41.762 --> 00:55:43.012 <v James Quintiere>Fragmentation is Yes. 00:55:43.409 --> 00:55:46.278 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>we have the I F Ss, uh, still, uh, going there. 00:55:46.438 --> 00:55:50.278 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hopefully we will rejuvenate the European IFS symposium. 00:55:50.278 --> 00:55:53.318 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There's Asia Oceania Symposium that's very big. 00:55:53.349 --> 00:55:53.889 <v James Quintiere>yeah. 00:55:53.889 --> 00:55:58.059 <v James Quintiere>I mean, Hirano started the Asian thing and he started that. 00:55:59.333 --> 00:56:02.621 <v James Quintiere>He felt that Asia would get the short stick 00:56:02.905 --> 00:56:03.034 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm, 00:56:03.061 --> 00:56:10.880 <v James Quintiere>and in some ways he's, he was r but the Asian oceanic thing was really, really very good. 00:56:10.880 --> 00:56:14.398 <v James Quintiere>And you know, people like Haran were not pioneers. 00:56:14.797 --> 00:56:16.726 <v James Quintiere>phlegm spread pool fires. 00:56:16.898 --> 00:56:23.137 <v James Quintiere>You probably see the work of Koseki that was Haran student definitive work on large pool fires. 00:56:23.833 --> 00:56:25.027 <v James Quintiere>don't see that anymore. 00:56:25.708 --> 00:56:41.130 <v 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. 00:56:41.960 --> 00:56:43.570 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would love to repeat that. 00:56:43.893 --> 00:56:44.384 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>okay. 00:56:44.384 --> 00:56:47.384 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It might sound like, uh, odd, but it hard. 00:56:47.384 --> 00:56:48.503 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But we're not doing that today. 00:56:48.503 --> 00:56:49.304 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We don't have funding. 00:56:49.304 --> 00:56:49.744 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We don't 00:56:49.864 --> 00:57:06.210 <v 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. 00:57:07.510 --> 00:57:11.521 <v James Quintiere>Calibrated them and understood that and wrote a paper with Gunner Heskes that who 00:57:11.550 --> 00:57:12.041 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah. 00:57:12.311 --> 00:57:21.706 <v James Quintiere>actually, invented the bidirectional probe have all of that thing going on in the background, immense support to that work. 00:57:21.873 --> 00:57:30.170 <v James Quintiere>And by the way, when, I had worked on, on FDS to reproduce that stuff, it does not do a perfect job. 00:57:30.170 --> 00:57:35.257 <v James Quintiere>And the only way you can do it is to, have cells far outside the room. 00:57:35.657 --> 00:57:35.818 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hmm. 00:57:36.201 --> 00:57:39.204 <v James Quintiere>so there's a paper on that in the, in the literature. 00:57:39.503 --> 00:57:45.543 <v James Quintiere>And my student who was from China would have preferred to see FDS come out better. 00:57:45.844 --> 00:57:49.208 <v James Quintiere>So he and another student, recast those results. 00:57:49.829 --> 00:57:58.244 <v James Quintiere>and did it with, a grid far outside the room and improved it to some, some extent, but that activity is very thin. 00:57:59.114 --> 00:58:04.981 <v James Quintiere>in the time when Steckler was doing this, would've been embraced and discussed. 00:58:05.400 --> 00:58:07.295 <v James Quintiere>Now it's lost in the literature. 00:58:07.295 --> 00:58:07.514 <v James Quintiere>okay. 00:58:07.514 --> 00:58:09.195 <v James Quintiere>I'm probably talking too much. 00:58:09.465 --> 00:58:10.065 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>you enjoying it? 00:58:10.065 --> 00:58:10.465 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>At least 00:58:11.235 --> 00:58:19.018 <v 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. 00:58:19.878 --> 00:58:20.489 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>really 00:58:20.934 --> 00:58:21.134 <v James Quintiere>it. 00:58:22.128 --> 00:58:25.228 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>and it, it's, it, it was a different time. 00:58:25.298 --> 00:58:26.619 <v James Quintiere>Why can't it be again? 00:58:27.099 --> 00:58:30.802 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>What a question how, for the end of, of the episode. 00:58:30.802 --> 00:58:32.563 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's make it, let's, let's, well, 00:58:33.467 --> 00:58:33.958 <v James Quintiere>Yeah. 00:58:34.132 --> 00:58:35.282 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>it is not just up to 00:58:35.375 --> 00:58:36.565 <v James Quintiere>No, it's not up to us. 00:58:36.699 --> 00:58:44.342 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>but you know what I, I can tell you there is a lot of brilliant, passionate people this industry. 00:58:44.342 --> 00:58:47.623 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Maybe a little scattered around the world, maybe in, in different places, 00:58:48.344 --> 00:58:51.375 <v James Quintiere>I, see that and I see, I see Europe is strong in that 00:58:51.690 --> 00:58:54.871 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And, uh, hopefully, maybe we will rekindle the passion. 00:58:54.871 --> 00:58:55.811 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Also okay. 00:58:55.811 --> 00:59:00.210 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um, so thank you very much for, this interview. 00:59:00.260 --> 00:59:01.731 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was, a pleasure. 00:59:02.246 --> 00:59:06.650 <v James Quintiere>I hope you don't have to, excerpt some of this stuff on. 00:59:08.385 --> 00:59:10.063 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I will, no worries. 00:59:10.608 --> 00:59:11.099 <v James Quintiere>Okay. 00:59:12.311 --> 00:59:13.271 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And this is for today. 00:59:13.481 --> 00:59:16.481 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>The episode has ended quite abruptly, but there's a reason for it. 00:59:16.751 --> 00:59:27.161 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 00:59:27.521 --> 00:59:29.590 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Plume experiments, Bernie McCaffrey. 00:59:29.831 --> 00:59:33.490 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>All the flashover experts that led to the creation of MQH. 00:59:33.670 --> 00:59:34.391 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Correlation. 00:59:34.661 --> 00:59:35.981 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Oh, such a great stuff. 00:59:36.190 --> 00:59:37.360 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>How they've measured it. 00:59:37.360 --> 00:59:42.340 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And I must tell it, these people were advanced in what they were doing. 00:59:42.820 --> 00:59:46.990 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's just simply fascinating and I hope we will someday. 00:59:47.291 --> 00:59:50.260 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Reach their level of technical understanding. 00:59:50.710 --> 00:59:52.090 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And their level of collaboration. 00:59:52.681 --> 00:59:58.014 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And that second thing is something that's really comes up from this As you can see with a lot of nostalgia. 00:59:58.043 --> 01:00:02.963 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Jim is talking about all the meetings between the American and Japanese scientists. 01:00:03.384 --> 01:00:07.614 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>He said that they were having a BI annual meeting for a week. 01:00:08.123 --> 01:00:08.903 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Can you imagine? 01:00:09.414 --> 01:00:11.003 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Signed is just going for a week. 01:00:11.003 --> 01:00:12.773 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So more to discuss science. 01:00:13.224 --> 01:00:14.903 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We don't have time for that anymore. 01:00:15.173 --> 01:00:20.483 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But th that that's, that's kind of stupid without this cross-pollination without this. 01:00:20.827 --> 01:00:25.086 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Exchange of knowledge, exchange of ideas there. 01:00:25.117 --> 01:00:26.827 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>There, there cannot be any growth. 01:00:26.856 --> 01:00:29.016 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>There are going to be any significant growth or maybe. 01:00:29.376 --> 01:00:33.860 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Maybe there can, but it's, it's just, so much less probable I wish. 01:00:34.340 --> 01:00:36.621 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We have more of these discussions. 01:00:37.101 --> 01:00:37.731 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Coming up. 01:00:37.920 --> 01:00:45.721 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 01:00:46.170 --> 01:00:47.880 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Everyone is welcome in here. 01:00:47.880 --> 01:00:51.510 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And I hope at least with this, one way. 01:00:51.547 --> 01:00:52.871 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>knowledge transfer. 01:00:52.931 --> 01:00:53.860 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I can. 01:00:54.400 --> 01:01:08.170 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 01:01:08.530 --> 01:01:10.871 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Anyway, I really hope we could slow down. 01:01:10.900 --> 01:01:16.001 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Uh, talk a little more and maybe get some more meaningful fire science and the app. 01:01:16.371 --> 01:01:18.231 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>If we get our research funded that. 01:01:18.710 --> 01:01:19.311 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Also help. 01:01:19.581 --> 01:01:28.867 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>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. 01:01:29.347 --> 01:01:32.976 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>An error in statistics to which the government responded. 01:01:33.547 --> 01:01:38.827 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Creating funding that, that let's do a break choose in our, in our field. 01:01:38.827 --> 01:01:43.746 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I hope we don't have to result to having wrong statistics to phone firesides. 01:01:43.777 --> 01:01:45.396 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I just, I just really hope someone. 01:01:45.786 --> 01:01:46.686 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Really did. 01:01:46.813 --> 01:01:53.684 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In the vast lot in that I guess the world is changing and fire is being recognized as one of the emerging issues. 01:01:54.074 --> 01:01:54.853 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So one day. 01:01:55.184 --> 01:01:56.503 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>The funding will be here. 01:01:56.773 --> 01:01:58.813 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And I hope on the day we talk more. 01:01:59.114 --> 01:02:00.313 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We exchange. 01:02:00.733 --> 01:02:02.534 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Our knowledge a little bit more. 01:02:02.534 --> 01:02:03.583 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We work together. 01:02:03.974 --> 01:02:06.914 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And together we build a little more fire, safe world. 01:02:07.101 --> 01:02:13.911 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And that's it for today, as you've heard, there's another episode with James Quintiere coming up next week. 01:02:14.271 --> 01:02:17.030 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So, I guess you will be looking up for that one. 01:02:17.030 --> 01:02:17.931 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I surely am. 01:02:18.201 --> 01:02:20.090 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you for being here with me today. 01:02:20.360 --> 01:02:22.371 <v Wojciech Węgrzyński>See you here next Wednesday by.

093 - The story of the golden era for the US fire science with James Quintiere

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