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Indexed by:会议论文

Date of Publication:2010-08-15

Included Journals:EI、Scopus

Abstract:With the appearance of micro environment and local exposure, non-uniform thermal environments become more common, which causes principles such as PMV in uniform condition to be non-applicable. Thus, it is significant to propose a new principle that predicts thermal sensation in non-uniform environments. The purpose of this study is to predict human local thermal sensation in a non-uniform thermal environment, analysis the correlation between thermal sensation and skin temperature and quantify thermal sensation. The experiment was carried out in a testing chamber. Chamber experiments and statistic analysis are the main researching methods. This paper presents results from 179 human subject tests and each test lasts from 1.5 to 3.5 hours. In order to study human response in various conditions, local body parts of the subjects including head, chest, back, arm, hand, leg and foot were independently heated or cooled while the rest of the body parts was exposed to a warm, neutral, or cool environment. Test results show that in non-uniform conditions, within certain limits, local thermal sensation has significant relevance with local skin temperature and secondly with mean skin temperature. Based on these tests, we developed predictive models of local thermal sensation in non-uniform conditions. Since these models predict human thermal sensation using only skin temperature, their application was not limited by the environment or clothing. The models will be useful for designing and evaluating non-uniform environments in buildings, such as floor air supply system, task-ambient air conditioning, etc.