Abstract
This paper presents a study of subjective assessments of thermal comfort when wearing business clothing made from conventional textiles, such as wool and blends with wool and textiles combined with phase-change materials (PCMs), which are capable of providing adequate thermal physiological comfort to the wearer. The evaluation of thermal comfort was carried out on the basis of determining the subjective feeling of thermal comfort with the help of test subjects in a computer controlled climatic chamber, in artificially created warm and slightly cold environmental conditions, at ambient temperature of 25°C, 20°C, 15°C and 10°C. The impact of particular business clothing systems and varied environmental conditions on the wearer's subjective feeling of thermal comfort was determined with a questionnaire and an assessment scale of thermal comfort defined by standard ISO 10551:1995. For this purpose, an analysis of the subjective evaluation of thermal comfort, the desired thermal state, the acceptability of the current situation and their personal tolerance of the environment, was made before, during and after each experiment. The results of the research show that subjective evaluations of thermal comfort directly depend on environmental conditions, as well as clothing systems and activity levels. It was found that the test subjects felt most comfortable in the selected business clothing at an ambient temperature of 20°C and 15°C. It is also evident from the results that at an ambient temperature of 25°C, the persons in the selected clothing felt slightly uncomfortable, especially during and after walking when they felt hot. The test subjects felt uncomfortable also at an ambient temperature of 10°C, when they felt cold or slightly cold while wearing the analysed 3-layer clothing systems without an additional layer of clothing. This indicates that an additional layer of clothing, such as a coat is needed for performing adequate thermal comfort around and below 10°C.
Highlights
Clothing wear comfort is a complex subjective perception or a mental state of a person, and is expressed as the result of a balanced process of heat exchange between the human body, the clothing system and the environment
The results of this research are presented as an analysis of the impact of warm and slightly cold environmental conditions on the subject’s thermal perception and“affective”assessment of thermal comfort whilst wearing different business clothing systems made of both conventional textiles and textiles in combination with phase-change materials (PCMs)
From the subjective assessments of thermal comfort, it can be concluded that test subjects while wearing clothing systems at an ambient temperature of 25°C expressed slight thermal discomfort, especially during and after walking
Summary
Clothing wear comfort is a complex subjective perception or a mental state of a person, and is expressed as the result of a balanced process of heat exchange between the human body, the clothing system and the environment. Comfort is primarily a subjective perception, it can be studied from different perspectives These are thermo-physiological, skin sensorial (tactile), mechanical and ergonomic, and psychological aspects of comfort [1,2,3]. Thermal comfort of clothing can be evaluated using several physical and physiological testing methods. An important method of measuring the thermo-physiological comfort is to perform wear trials with study participants. In the physiological tests the study participants are dressed in the experimental clothing systems and perform some kind of given metabolic workload in a controlled or real environment. Different physiological parameters (e.g. rectal and skin temperature, heart rate, weight loss, metabolic rate and other physical and physiological values of interest) and subjective perception of clothing comfort can all be determined according to research interest [6, 8]
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