Thermal effect of temperature gradient in a field environment chamber served by displacement ventilation system in the tropics

The effect of vertical air temperature gradient on overall and local thermal comfort at different overall thermal sensations and room air temperatures (at 0.6 m height) was investigated in a room served by displacement ventilation system. Sixty tropically acclimatized subjects performed sedentary office work for a period of 3 h during each session of the experiment. Nominal vertical air temperature gradients between 0.1 and 1.1 m heights were 1, 3 and 5 K/m while nominal room air temperatures at 0.6 m height were 20, 23 and 26 °C. Air velocity in the space near the subjects was kept at below 0.2 m/s. Relative humidity at 0.6 m height was maintained at 50%. It was found that temperature gradient had different influences on thermal comfort at different overall thermal sensations. At overall thermal sensation close to neutral, only when room air temperature was substantially low, such as 20 °C, percentage dissatisfied of overall body increased with the increase of temperature gradient. At overall cold and slightly warm sensations, percentage dissatisfied of overall body was non-significantly affected by temperature gradient. Overall thermal sensation had significant impact on overall thermal comfort. Local thermal comfort of body segment was affected by both overall and local thermal sensations.     

Assessment of thermal environment using a thermal manikin in a field environment chamber served by displacement ventilation system

This paper presents a thermal comfort study using a thermal manikin in a field environment chamber served by the Displacement Ventilation (DV) system. The manikin has a female body with 26 individually heated and controlled body segments. The manikin together with subjects was exposed to 3 levels of vertical air temperature gradients, nominally 1, 3 & 5 K/m, between 0.1 and 1.1 m heights at 3 room air temperatures of 20, 23 and 26 °C at 0.6 m height. Relative humidity at 0.6 m height and air velocity near the manikin and the subjects were maintained at 50% and less than 0.2 m/s, respectively. The aims of this study are to assess thermally non-uniform environment served by DV system using the manikin and correlate the subjective responses with measurements from the manikin. The main findings indicate that room air temperature had greater influence on overall and local thermal sensations and comfort than temperature gradient. Local thermal discomfort decreased with increase of room air temperature at overall thermally neutral state. The local discomfort was affected by overall thermal sensation and was lower at overall thermally neutral state than at overall cold and cool sensations.     

Challenging the assumptions for thermal sensation scales

Scales are widely used to assess the personal experience of thermal conditions in built environments. Most commonly, thermal sensation is assessed, mainly to determine whether a particular thermal condition is comfortable for individuals. A seven-point thermal sensation scale has been used extensively, which is suitable for describing a one-dimensional relationship between physical parameters of indoor environments and subjective thermal sensation. However, human thermal comfort is not merely a physiological but also a psychological phenomenon. Thus, it should be investigated how scales for its assessment could benefit from a multidimensional conceptualization. The common assumptions related to the usage of thermal sensation scales are challenged, empirically supported by two analyses. These analyses show that the relationship between temperature and subjective thermal sensation is non-linear and depends on the type of scale used. Moreover, the results signify that most people do not perceive the categories of the thermal sensation scale as equidistant and that the range of sensations regarded as ‘comfortable’ varies largely. Therefore, challenges known from experimental psychology (describing the complex relationships between physical parameters, subjective perceptions and measurement-related issues) need to be addressed by the field of thermal comfort and new approaches developed.     

稳态环境耐寒与非耐寒人体热反应实验研究

为了探究不同体质人体对冷环境的生理和心理热反应,开展了耐寒与非耐寒受试者热反应稳态实验研究。分析了不同体质受试者的皮肤温度、热流、心率、心率变异性、热感觉和热舒适投票随环境温度的变化。结果发现:无论是在生理还是心理上,非耐寒与耐寒受试者存在一定的差异性。非耐寒受试者皮肤温度、心率高于耐寒受试者,而热流低于耐寒受试者;在相同的低温环境下,非耐寒受试者比耐寒受试者感觉更冷,更不舒适。由此推出,在稳态环境中,皮肤温度、热流、热感觉和热舒适投票等可以作为区分耐寒和非耐寒体质的指标,但是心率有待进一步验证。此外,心率变异性随环境温度变化规律不明显,个体差异对其影响大于环境温度的影响。     

Effects of steady-state noise and temperature conditions on environmental perception and acceptability

The combined effects of noise and temperature on environmental perception and acceptability were studied on 18 lightly clothed subjects (0.6 clo), individually exposed for 2 h in a climatic chamber. Three homogeneous climatic conditions were chosen (air temperature at 18, 24 or 30 degrees C, air velocity =0.1 m/s). For each of them, three different noise levels were continuously maintained (35, 60, 75 dBA, recorded fan noise). The 18 subjects were divided into three groups and each group experienced only one single thermal condition, at each level of noise, during three different experimental sessions. Subjective answers about perception and comfort were obtained at t = 30 and 120 min. Main results indicate that acoustic perception decreases when thermal environment is far from thermoneutrality. Although the combined effects of noise and temperature did not influence the physiological data, our results show that whatever the ambient temperature, thermal unpleasantness is higher when noise level increases. Finally, equivalence between acoustic and thermal sensations is proposed for short-term exposure (1 degree C = 2.6 dBA) and for steady state (1 degrees C = 2.9 dBA). In conclusion, this study strongly suggests that interactions between environmental components do exist, right from perceptual level, and might explain some combined effects on cognitive performance.     

Thermal comfort of people in the hot and humid area of China—impacts of season,climate, and thermal history

We conducted a climate chamber study on the thermal comfort of people in the hot and humid area of China. Sixty subjects from naturally ventilated buildings and buildings with split air conditioners participated in the study, and identical experiments were conducted in a climate chamber in both summer and winter. Psychological and physiological responses were observed over a wide range of conditions, and the impacts of season, climate, and thermal history on human thermal comfort were analyzed. Seasonal and climatic heat acclimatization was confirmed, but they were found to have no significant impacts on human thermal sensation and comfort. The outdoor thermal history was much less important than the indoor thermal history in regard to human thermal sensation, and the indoor thermal history in all seasons of a year played a key role in shaping the subjects' sensations in a wide range of thermal conditions. A warmer indoor thermal history in warm seasons produced a higher neutral temperature, a lower thermal sensitivity, and lower thermal sensations in warm conditions. The comfort and acceptable conditions were identified for people in the hot and humid area of China.     

Models of human thermoregulation and the prediction of local and overall thermal sensations

This study aims at comparing the predictions of skin temperature from different models of human thermoregulation and investigating the currently available methods for the prediction of the local and overall thermal sensations. In this paper, the Fiala model, the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) thermoregulation model and a multi-segmental (MS) Pierce model were tested against recently measured data from the literature. The local and overall thermal sensations were predicted for different room conditions, obtained from a recent experimental study, using the UCB comfort model coupled with the MS-Pierce model. The overall thermal sensation was further predicted using three other models. The predictions were then compared with the subjective votes obtained from that study. The equivalent temperature approach was also investigated based on the same experimental study. The results show comparisons of the predicted skin temperature by the thermoregulation models, under steady state and dynamic conditions, with the measured data as well as the predictions of the thermal sensations from the different models.     

Effects of turbulent air on human thermal sensations in a warm isothermal environment

Air movement can provide desirable cooling in "warm" conditions, but it can also cause discomfort. This study focuses on the effects of turbulent air movements on human thermal sensations through investigating the preferred air velocity within the temperature range of 26 degrees C and 30.5 degrees C at two relative humidity levels of 35% and 65%. Subjects in an environmental chamber were allowed to adjust air movement as they liked while answering a series of questions about their thermal comfort and draft sensation. The results show that operative temperature, turbulent intensity and relative humidity have significant effects on preferred velocities, and that there is a wide variation among subjects in their thermal comfort votes. Most subjects can achieve thermal comfort under the experimental conditions after adjusting the air velocity as they like, except at the relative high temperature of 30.5 degrees C. The results also indicate that turbulence may reduce draft risk in neutral-to-warm conditions. The annoying effect caused by the air pressure and its drying effect at higher velocities should not be ignored. A new model of Percentage Dissatisfied at Preferred Velocities (PDV) is presented to predict the percentage of feeling draft in warm isothermal conditions.     

Thermal sensation and comfort models for non-uniform and transient environments, part III: Whole-body sensation and comfort

A three-part series presents the development of models for predicting the local thermal sensation (Part I) and local thermal comfort (Part II) of different parts of the human body, and also the whole-body sensation and comfort (Part III) that result from combinations of local sensation and comfort. The models apply to sedentary activities in a range of environments: uniform and non-uniform, stable and transient. They are based on diverse findings from the literature and from body-part-specific human subject tests in a climate chamber. They were validated against a test of automobile passengers. The series is intended to present the models’ rationale, structure, and coefficients, so that others can test them and develop them further as additional empirical data becomes available.A) The whole-body (overall) sensation model has two forms, depending on whether all of the body's segments have sensations effectively in the same direction (e.g warm or cool), or whether some segments have sensations opposite to those of the rest of the body. For each, individual body parts have different weights for warm versus cool sensations, and strong local sensations dominate the overall sensation. If all sensations are near neutral, the overall sensation is close to the average of all body sensations.B) The overall comfort model also has two forms. Under stable conditions, people evaluate their overall comfort by a complaint-driven process, meaning that when two body parts are strongly uncomfortable, no matter how comfortable the other body parts might be, the overall comfort will be near the discomfort level of the two most uncomfortable parts. When the environmental conditions are transient, or people have control over their environments, overall comfort is better than that of the two most uncomfortable body parts. This can be accounted for by adding the most comfortable vote to the two most uncomfortable ones.     

厦门高校教室冬季热环境测试及热舒适预测

为考察冬季非空调环境下人体热感觉,对厦门某高校教室的热舒适度进行了现场测试.在测量室内外热舒适参数的同时,通过问卷调查得到了人体热反应样本.分析样本得出厦门高校教室冬季非空调工况下人体热中性温度和热期望温度分别为19.3和19.4℃.综合考虑温度、相对湿度、平均辐射温度、风速及服装热阻对坐姿轻度活动状态人体的热舒适影响,使用MATLAB软件进行非线性回归,得到非空调工况下热舒适预测方程.该预测方程与实测得到的人体热舒适投票两者结果有较高相关度,同时较大程度上反映了冬季非空调环境下人体热感觉的变异.     

动态条件下人体对个体送风的热反应研究

实验研究了动态条件下不同背景温度、送风温差和送风速度时的人体热反应,并与稳态条件下的结果进行了比较;给出了动态条件下整体热感觉的预测公式.研究结果表明,动态送风可以显著降低使用者的整体热感觉,提高使用者对个体送风的评价和感知空气质量;但TSV与TCV不一致,发生了偏离.     

热湿工况下工位辐射空调的热舒适实验研究

为研究热湿工况下使用工位辐射空调的人体热舒适情况,在人工环境实验室内,通过改变环境背景温度来影响人体的热感觉,并采用热感觉投票(TSV)作为评价标准,重点研究了人体头部、躯干、上肢、下肢以及整体热感觉情况。实验结果表明,尽管背景环境参数超出舒适范围,但使用工位辐射空调能维持受试者的舒适状态,即背景温度稳定在28℃时,平均整体热感觉投票值低于+0.2;背景温度为30℃时,受试者热感觉仍能满足ASHRAE规范中规定的80%可接受范围要求。     

Thermal sensation and comfort models for non-uniform and transient environments, part II: Local comfort of individual body parts

A three-part series presents the development of models for predicting the local thermal sensation (Part I) and local comfort (Part II) of different parts of the human body, and also the whole-body sensation and comfort responses (Part III). The models predict these subjective responses to the environment from thermophysiological measurements or predictions (skin and core temperatures). The models apply to a range of environments: uniform and non-uniform, transient and stable. They are based on diverse results from literature and from body-part-specific human subject tests in a climate chamber. They were validated against a test of passengers in automobiles. This series is intended to present the rationale, structure, and coefficients for these models so that others can test them and develop them further as additional empirical data becomes available. The experimental methods and some measured results from the climate chamber tests have been published previously.Part II describes a thermal comfort model with coefficients representing 19 individual local body parts. For each part, its local comfort is predicted from local and whole-body thermal sensations. These inputs are obtained from the sensation models described in Part I and III, or from measurements.     

非空调环境下性别与热舒适的关系

对长沙某高校的600多名学生进行了为期一年的现场问卷调查,对有关空气参数进行了测量。统计分析结果表明,女性的耐寒能力比男性差;预期平均评价PMV指标对男女热感觉的预测效果较差;男女对湿感觉的评价无较大差异,只在温度较低时,女性比男性觉得更潮湿;女性的吹风感比男性强;热舒适评价不仅受热、湿感觉影响,还受其他环境因素及心理因素的影响。     

Effect of local exposure on human responses

At room temperatures ranging from 28 to 35 °C, the three sensitive body parts face, chest and back were exposed to local cooling airflow, whose temperatures ranged from 22 to 28 °C. Dressed in shorts, 30 randomly selected male subjects were exposed to each condition for 30 min and reported their local thermal sensations of all body parts, overall thermal sensation and thermal acceptability on voting scales at regular intervals. It was shown that local exposure affected local thermal sensations of the unexposed body parts significantly, based on which a new influencing factor method was proposed. Influencing factor and weighting factor for each body part are unaffected by room or cooling air temperatures under steady state and the predictive model of overall thermal sensation was obtained using influencing and weighting factors. Taking the maximum thermal sensation difference between body parts to represent non-uniformity of thermal sensation, a new assessment model for non-uniform thermal environment was proposed. The model shows that the upper boundary of the acceptable room temperature range can be shifted from 26 to 30.5 °C while face cooling is provided.     

A Comparative Study Of Discomfort Caused By Indoor Air Pollution,Thermal Load And Noisec

The relative importance of sensory air pollution, thermal load and noise was studied under controlled conditions in two identical environmental chambers. In one chamber subjects were exposed to various levels of either thermal load or poor indoor air quality. For each condition tested in this chamber, the subjects were exposed to a number of noise levels in an adjacent chamber with neutral thermal conditions and good indoor air quality in order to determine a noise level causing the same degree of discomfort. A total of 68 comparisons of the conditions in the two chambers were made by the same group of 16 subjects after one-minute exposure in each chamber. In the operative temperature range of 23–29°C, a 1°C change in operative temperature was found to have the same effect on human comfort as a change in perceived air quality of 2.4 decipol or a change in noise level of 3.9 dB. For levels of perceived air quality up to 10 decipol, a 1 -decipol change in perceived air quality had the same effect on human comfort as a change in noise level of 1.2 dB. A relationship between traffic noise level and percentage dissatisfied was established     

Local thermal sensation and comfort study in a field environment chamber served by displacement ventilation system in the tropics

This paper presents a study of local thermal sensation (LTS) and comfort in a field environmental chamber (FEC) served by displacement ventilation (DV) system. The FEC, 11.12 m (L)×7.53 m (W)×2.60 m (H), simulates a typical office layout. A total of 60 tropically acclimatized subjects, 30 male and 30 female, were engaged in sedentary office work for 3 h. Subjects were exposed to three vertical air temperature gradients, nominally 1, 3 and 5 K/m, between 0.1 and 1.1 m heights and three room air temperatures of 20, 23 and 26 °C at 0.6 m height. The objective of this study is to investigate the mutual effect of local and overall thermal sensation (OTS) and comfort in DV environment. The results show that in a space served by DV system, at OTS close to neutral, local thermal discomfort decreased with the increase of room air temperature. The OTS of occupants was mainly affected by LTS at the arm, calf, foot, back and hand. Local thermal discomfort was affected by both LTS and OTS. At overall cold thermal sensation, all body segments prefer slightly warm sensation. At overall slightly warm thermal sensation, all body segments prefer slightly cool sensation.     

Application of human thermal load into unsteady condition for improvement of outdoor thermal comfort

Human thermal comfort is studied as a countermeasure to the thermal stress in outdoor urban space. Outdoors, people experience the strong impact of solar radiation in states that are unsteady and non-uniform. The feeling of comfort is a mixed sensation that can be easier to improve overall, as compared with a global large-scale effort, and can lead to improved ways of saving energy and reducing costs. Moreover, this can be directly beneficial to human experience and fulfill natural human desires. Since a thermal comfort index is a useful tool for understanding the present state and evaluating the impact of countermeasures, we examine the effects of the human thermal load, which is a thermal comfort index based on the energy balance of the human body. In a steady state, and even in an unsteady state with its variations in weather and human factors, thermal comfort values can generally be obtained by using the overall human thermal load. The reason for this is that the human thermal load takes physiological factors in account as well as weather parameters. This leads to the idea that thermal sensations follow from the human thermal load, which can then well describe a given human environment. As a result, human sensations as expressed by the human thermal load pave the way to the creation of comfortable urban spaces that require minimum expense and energy as an example of simple heat transport model focusing on urban outer structure.     

感知控制对湿热地区户外庭园空间热舒适性的影响——以华侨大学“世外·花缘”生活实验室为例

户外热舒适对城市景观空间的使用具有显著影响。目前对户外热舒适的研究较少考虑感知控制(Perceived Control)的影响作用。通过在选定实验区域内对志愿者进行问卷调查,分析感知控制对庭园空间热舒适的影响。结果表明：1)感知控制对湿热地区庭园空间的夏季中性温度具有一定影响,但对秋、冬季中性温度影响微弱;2)感知控制受限会导致热感觉的敏感程度增强,热舒适范围变窄;3)在中性温度范围附近,感知控制对热舒适感的影响十分微弱,而在热感觉为“冷”“凉”“暖”“热”的热环境中,感知控制对不适感具有一定缓解作用;4)感知控制在一定程度上扩大了人们对庭园热环境的可接受范围,当感知控制受限时,人们对热环境的接受度会有所下降。     

上海地区适应性热舒适研究

为研究上海地区人体热感觉和适应性热舒适现状,通过环境参数测量和问卷调查结合的方式来分析和探讨室内外气候条件、服装热阻、热感觉等关系。本文主要涉及自然通风建筑内人体热感觉和热中性温度随季节变化的关系。结果表明:在适应性热舒适研究中,人体中性温度与室外环境温度具有较强的相关性,得到的上海地区适应性热舒适模型可为适合我国自身特点的热舒适研究提供依据。