A thermal comfort evaluation on vehicular environments based on local human body thermal sensations

Abstract

With the rapid development of the automobile industry and increasing demand for automobiles, consumers also have more and more car requirements. They do not only consider energy, safety and price but also expect a good indoor environment and improved thermal comfort. In order to construct and apply a thermal comfort evaluation method suitable for Chinese consumers, a relationship between the equivalent space temperature and the thermal sensation was obtained by collecting characteristic thermal sensation data of the human body in different environments. An evaluation method based on whole-body and local thermal comfort sensation characteristics for adult Chinese males and females was designed, At the same time, the study found that women's tolerance for thermal sensation is lower and the thermal comfort zone is relatively smaller. In order to explore the accuracy of the evaluation method and a typical non-uniform vehicular environment was selected to verify the findings. The local and whole-body equivalent space temperature of the co-driver seat in the vehicle was tested with a warm dummy, through which whole-body and local thermal sensation values were predicted. The local and whole-body thermal sensation was tested with subjects' subjective experience under the same conditions. The predicted thermal sensation obtained through the equivalent space temperature was compared to the subjective experience results, and the correlation reached up to 0.911, while significance (two-tailed) only reached 0.002, it was possible to predict the thermal sensation vote within an accuracy level of 0.3 point, further proving the accuracy of the whole-body and local thermal comfort evaluation method for adult Chinese male thermal sensation characteristics as proposed in this paper. The results obtained in this study can be used to predict environmental thermal comfort.