Revised Interlaboratory Study of Sweating Thermal Manikins Including Results from the Sweating Agile Thermal Manikin

Abstract

Recently thermal and evaporative resistances of five clothing ensembles were measured using thermal manikins at six laboratories. For evaporative resistances, the manikin surfaces were wetted prior to or constantly during measurement. In this paper, previous resistance values are combined with results from the Sweating Agile Thermal Manikin of EMPA. For all ensembles, reproducibility of the intrinsic thermal resistance between labs improved by 4–9% after including EMPA results and a further 16–39% for four ensembles after excluding results from another lab. The intrinsic evaporative resistance reproducibility for three ensembles improved by 7–9% after including EMPA and by 7–29% excluding the other lab. In spite of these improvements, differences in manikin design, measurement, and calculation methodologies still account for the large reproducibilities ranging from 22–46% and from 41–38% for the intrinsic thermal and evaporative resistances, respectively. Presently, ASTM is drafting a new standard for sweating thermal manikins. Standardization and methodological improvement, including proposals presented here, should help to reduce these reproducibilities in future.