For non-banded lower ignition propensity (LIP) cigarettes the residual length of extinguished cigarettes has been shown to be useful to more precisely estimate the rate of self-extinguishment compared to just counting self-extinguished cigarettes (ISO 12863). In practice, however, cigarette papers with bands are much more common on LIP cigarettes. The present study investigates, if residual length data of banded cigarettes may also help to provide a more accurate estimate of the rate of self-extinguishment.

Of six different banded LIP cigarettes with self-extinguishment rates between 75% and 100% the rate of self-extinguishment and the residual length were measured with three replicates of 40 cigarettes for each cigarette design. The rate of self-extinguishment was estimated from a statistical model based on residual length data and compared to ISO 12863 data. The results show that practically no improvement with respect to the accuracy of the estimate can be achieved. These results agree with predictions obtained from simulation. As banded LIP cigarettes extinguish at the bands, but as the band position is random, residual length data of banded cigarettes contains variability, which does not provide additional information about the rate of self-extinguishment. This deteriorates the accuracy of the estimate. To improve the estimate, the rate of self-extinguishment was estimated from the number of the band at which the cigarettes extinguished. Again estimates obtained from a statistical model were compared to measured results and to simulations and a reasonable agreement was found. It was found that the standard deviation of the estimated rate of self-extinguishment can be reduced by about five to ten percent for self-extinguishment rates of 75-100%. Overall it has to be concluded that for banded LIP cigarettes residual length data contains little additional information about the rate of self-extinguishment, but still offers some limited potential to provide a better estimate of the rate of self-extinguishment than counting extinguished cigarettes.