Effect of temperature difference between manikin and wet fabric skin surfaces on clothing evaporative resistance: how much error is there?

Summary, in English

Clothing evaporative resistance is one of the inherent factors that impede heat exchange by sweating evaporation. It is widely used as a basic input in physiological heat strain models. Previous studies showed a large variability in clothing evaporative resistance both at intra-laboratory and inter-laboratory testing. The errors in evaporative resistance may cause severe problems in the determination of heat stress level of the wearers. In this paper, the effect of temperature difference between the manikin nude surface and wet textile skin surface on clothing evaporative resistance was investigated by both theoretical analysis and thermal manikin measurements. It was found that the temperature difference between the skin surface and the manikin nude surface could lead to an error of up to 35.9% in evaporative resistance of the boundary air layer. Similarly, this temperature difference could also introduce an error of up to 23.7% in the real clothing total evaporative resistance (R ( et_real ) < 0.1287 kPa m(2)/W). Finally, it is evident that one major error in the calculation of evaporative resistance comes from the use of the manikin surface temperature instead of the wet textile fabric skin temperature.

• Author: Faming Wang; Kalev Kuklane; Chuansi Gao; Ingvar Holmér
• Department/s: Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology
• Publishing year: 2012
• Language: English
• Pages: 177-182
• Publication/Series: International Journal of Biometeorology
• Volume: 56
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00484-011-0411-z
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Springer
• Topic: Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics
• Keywords: Heat stress; Thermal manikin; Thermoregulatory model; Wet fabric skin temperature
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1432-1254