Thermal Environment Monitoring Research Articles

An Approach Towards Development Of Pmv Based Thermal Comfort Smart Sensor

Abstract ASHRAE 55-2004 and ISO 7730 standards failed to predict actual comfort level and lead to oversize design of HVAC system. So proper thermal environment monitoring is an important subject to have right size of HVAC systems. A prototype thermal EM system has been developed. Thermal environment parameters such as: temperature, relative humidity, CO and CO2 are measured by using the developed system. These data are used to calculate the thermal comfort index. The subjective judgments and the calculated PMV are compared with the results. The results showed the possibility of using PMV based thermal comfort smart sensor.

Heat Injury Risk of Simulated March and Urban Patrol Infantry Tasks

The Australian army is developing a range of physical employment tests and standards for infantry soldiers based around critical infantry combat arms trade tasks. One key aspect of the development of these tests is to ensure that they are safe to administer in a range of thermal environments. PURPOSE: To determine the thermal safety of soldiers undertaking 10 km march and simulated urban patrolling tasks in cool to moderately hot environments. METHODS: 144 trained infantry soldiers and 28 infantry trainees performed the march in thermal conditions that ranged from 11.8°C to 25.0°C WBGToutdoors. 173 trained infantry soldiers and 28 infantry trainees performed the simulated urban patrol in thermal conditions that ranged from 6.1°C to 26.8°C WBGToutdoors. All participants were acclimated to the test environment. The march was conducted at a velocity of 6 km.hr−1 (10 min rest after 50 min) in camouflage clothing while carrying a total weight of 45 kg. The simulated urban patrol involved repeated 22 m sprints (7 s sprint, 7 s recovery) to volitional fatigue or a maximum total test time of 12 min. Each sprint was initiated from a kneeling position. The soldiers wore/carried equipment totalling 20.6 kg, including ballistic vest and helmet, during the simulated urban patrol task. Environmental conditions were measured using a QuestTemp° 36 Thermal Environment Monitor and core temperature was measured using HQInc CorTemp radio telemetered thermal pills. RESULTS: Core temperature increase to 38.35 + 0.50 °C (mean + SD) (95% CI: 38.31 to 38.39 °C) during the march and to 38.20 + 0.51 °C (95% CI: 38.16 to 38.24 °C) during the simulated urban rushing task. Three (2%) and four (2%) of the participants in the respective tasks exceeded the pre-determined core temperature safety cut-off of 39.5 °C and were excluded from further participation. None of the soldiers experienced any signs or symptoms of heat illness during the tasks. CONCLUSION: The conduct of these simulated tasks in the cool to moderately hot conditions described did not result in heat injury and is likely to be safe so long as standard heat management practices are followed. Supported by the Australian Defence Force.

A smart thermal environment monitor based on IEEE 1451.2 standard for global networking

A temperature and relative humidity (RH) monitor using a thermistor and a polyimide-film RH sensor is developed for global assessment of thermal environments. The smart transducer interface module includes the relaxation oscillators for signal conditioning and a one-chip 16-bit microcomputer for networking. The microcomputer accommodates the calibration tables as well as the mandatory transducer electronic data sheets specified by the IEEE 1451.2 standard. The online calibration using the calibration table and the ratiometric signal conditioning allow /spl plusmn/0.14/spl deg/C accuracy over the temperature range from -20/spl deg/C to 50/spl deg/C and /spl plusmn/2.5RH accuracy over the RH range from 20%RH to 90%RH. Beside these high-accuracy measurements using low-cost sensors, the monitor features an adaptive architecture for global networking.

Detection of surface temperature from LANDSAT-7/ETM+

Hiroshima Institute of Technology (HIT) in Japan has established a LANDSAT-7 Ground Station in cooperation with NASDA for receiving and processing the ETM+ data on March 15 th, 2000 in Japan. The authors performed a verification study on the surface temperature derived from thermal infrared band image data of LANDSAT 7/Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) for the estimation of temperatures around Hiroshima city and bay area in the western part of Japan as a test site. As to the thermal infrared band, the approximate functions for converting the spectral radiance into the surface temperature are estimated by considering both typical surface temperatures measured by the simultaneous field survey with the satellite observation and the spectral radiance observed by ETM+ band 6 (10.40–12.50μm), and then the estimation of the surface temperature distribution around the test site was examined.In this study, the authors estimated the surface temperature distribution equivalent to the land cover categories around the test site for establishing a guideline of surface temperature detection by LANDSAT7/ETM+ data. As the result of comparison of the truth data and the estimated surface temperature, the correlation coefficients of the approximate function referred to the truth data are from 0.9821 to 0.9994, and the differences are observed from +0.7 to −1.5°C in summer, from +0.4 to -0.9 *C in autumn, from -1.6 to −3.4°C in winter and from +0.5 to -0.5C in spring season respectively. It is clearly found that the estimation of surface temperature based on the approximate functions for converting the spectral radiance into the surface temperature referred to the truth data is improved over the directly estimated surface temperature obtained from satellite data. Finally, the successive seasonal change of surface temperature distribution pattern of the test site is precisely detected with the temperature legend of 0 to 80'C derived from LANDSAT-7/ETM+ band 6 image data for the thermal environment monitoring. 2003 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.