In this episode of Experiments that Changed Fire Science we cover T. Jin’s experiments on the visibility in smoke – two experiments carried out in 1970 and 1971 in Japan that truly changed the way how we model fires and how we design fire safety in our buildings.

This episodes presents my recollection of Jin’s experiments, based on the published work – the seminal paper at the IAFSS in 1997 (https://publications.iafss.org/publications/fss/5/3/view/fss_5-3.pdf) and the original material published in Japanese in 1970 and 1971:

• Jin, T. (1970). Visibility through Fire Smoke (I). Bulletin of the Fire Prevention Society of Japan, 19(2).
• Jin, T. (1971). Visibility through Fire Smoke (II). Bulletin of the Fire Prevention Society of Japan, 21(1).

In the episode, I highlight the technical details of the experiments and their potential impact on the findings. I also present the overall model proposed by Jin, indicating the variables that influence it, and my recollection of how this model was implemented in modern fire safety engineering.

Further readings to this would be some of my papers:

• Węgrzyński, W., & Vigne, G. (2017). Experimental and numerical evaluation of the influence of the soot yield on the visibility in smoke in CFD analysis. Fire Safety Journal, 91(SI), 389–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2017.03.053
• Węgrzyński, W., Antosiewicz, P., & Fangrat, J. (2021). Multi-Wavelength Densitometer for Experimental Research on the Optical Characteristics of Smoke Layers. Fire Technology, 57(5), 2683–2706. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01139-5

And a very recent paper by my collaborators from Wuppertal:

• Gnendiger, C., Schultze, T., Börger, K., Belt, A., & Arnold, L. (2024). Extinction coefficients from aerosol measurements. Fire Safety Journal, 146, 104110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2024.104110

Please also visit episode https://www.firescienceshow.com/030-visibility-prediction-framework-with-lukas-arnold/ with my friend Lukas Arnold, on how we intend to change the visibility prediction in fire safety engineering!

This research was funded in part by National Science Centre, Poland in the grant OPUS 2020/39/I/ST8/03159.

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