Investigation of human body skin temperatures as a bio-signal to indicate overall thermal sensations

Abstract

This study investigates the possibility of the use of human body skin temperature to assess thermal sensation, by studying skin temperatures from ten body segments and analyzing the correlation between the physiological data: skin temperature and overall thermal sensation.Since the human body regulates skin temperature to balance the heat gain and heat loss, the use of skin temperature has significant potential as an index to the thermal sensation. Therefore, this research has relied on experiments using human subjects in an environmental chamber to investigate and determine how skin temperatures change, depending on the ambient thermal conditions, and to identify which data type and body segment generate the most significant physiological information that will represent the overall thermal sensation.For this study, the experiments were conducted with 26 volunteers in an experimental chamber for about 2h each, while the indoor temperature was changed from 20°C to 30°C. Results of this study revealed that skin temperature change rates (gradients) were more consistent with the thermal comfort condition than with the actual levels of skin temperatures of participants, and that the measured skin temperatures at their wrists provided more interpretable data than that of any other body segments. Therefore, the research findings have shown the potential of skin temperature as a thermal sensation index to reliably represent an individual’s thermal sensation in a thermally uniformed environment.