Effects of local body heating on thermal comfort for audiences in open-air venues in 2022 Winter Olympics

Abstract

The snow events of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games will be held in Chongli, Hebei Province, China, where the outdoor temperature is predicted to be lower than that of recent Winter Olympics hosts. The audiences of snow events watch the competitions in open-air building venue, where it is usually cold and windy. To reduce the negative impact of outdoor severe cold conditions on the viewing feelings, the effectiveness of several body heating measures (cushion, footpad, and gloves) were studied at temperature condition between – 10 °C and – 15 °C in a cryogenic chamber, with an air velocity of 0.9 m/s. Eight male subjects participated in this experiment, whose subjective evaluations and physiological parameters were recorded and analyzed. Additionally, the energy consumption of each heating measure was also monitored. The results show that the heating cushion is the most effective measure in improving the overall thermal evaluation, while the heating gloves has the highest ratio of thermal comfort improvement and energy consumption. The heating footpad is not ideal for either thermal comfort improvement or energy consumption, due to the high thermal resistance of the shoes.