Abstract
Thermal Imaging systems are reported to be crucial for fire fighting and beginning to be used by fire fighters. The performance of thermal imaging system is determined by both the radiation of infrared from the target and the attenuation of infrared signal in the optical path by the absorption, scattering, diffraction and reflection. In the scene of fire, water drops with various sizes such as vaporized water, wafer mist from sprinkler, and wafer to suppress the fire reside with various gas generated by burning. To measure the transmission of infrared radiation in the scene of fire, fire simulating system and thermal imagers with cooled detector which detects $3{\sim}5{\mu}m$ infrared and uncooled detector fabricated by the MEMS technology which detects $8{\sim}12{\mu}m$ infrared. are made. With thermal imagers and Ire simulating system, the change of thermal image with respect to the change of visibility controlled with the burned fas was measured. It was found that the transmission of infrared was not reduced by the burned gas, which could be explained by the long wavelength of infrared ray compared with visible ray. However, the transmission of infrared ray was largely reduced by the combination of burned gas and water mist supplied by sprinkler. This is contrary to the results of calculated transmission through the pure water mist and shows that the transmission of infrared ray is mostly affected by the compounds of water mist and burned gas. In this case, it was found that the uncooled detector which detects $8{\sim}12{\mu}m$ infrared ray is better than cooled detector which detects $3{\sim}5{\mu}m$ infrared ray for fire fighting.
