A new human comfort model onboard a vessel based on Sugeno type fuzzy inference system

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a human (passenger/crew) comfort model to establish the relationship between the indoor living conditions and the motions of a vessel, with the main objective of being able to provide better insight and understanding of the factors that can make a human more comfortable onboard a vessel during her operation. In order to do this, a new passenger comfort index (PCI) is developed by using a Sugeno type fuzzy inference system which takes into account seven variables which are motion sickness, air temperature, mean radiant temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, activity level of passengers and their clothing insulation. The PCI is calculated implicitly as the outcome of linguistic rules which are expressed as in the form of if-then clauses. Validation and operational scenarios are performed and discussed to show the applicability of the proposed index. The proposed methodology can be used as a human comfort assessment tool during ship design stage as well as a real-time comfort evaluation of human/passengers to help ship personnel onboard a passenger vessel during her voyage.