Experimentally, the effects of environmental conditions upon human capabilities have been studied most often through the imposition of a single stressor in isolation. Although it seems to be a common belief that thermal comfort can be influenced by concomitant stimulation of non-tactile sensorial modalities, few studies have succeeded in delineating non-tactile stimulations, which interact with...

Current existing thermal control systems are operated based on thermal comfort models generated by regression formulas averaging the thermal responses over data collected during extensive experiments involving panels of human subjects. These models may not be appropriate for an individual whose physiological characteristics happen to be located outside of the main stream from the experimental s...

A personalized thermal comfort prediction method is proposed for use in combination with smart controls for building automation. Occupant thermal comfort is traditionally measured and predicted by the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) metric, which is based on extensive field trials linking reported comfort levels with the various factors. However, PMV is a statistical measure applying to large populat...

In-car comfort functions decrease driving stress and therefore increase safety. Drivers typically do not use all available comfort functions optimally, if at all, in every situation they would offer a substantial increase in comfort. Automating such functions as proactive recommender systems would exploit the full potential for decreasing driver stress. Because comfort functions are highly depe...

Subjective wear trials have been carried out to determine thermal comfort performance of knitted sports garments whose objective thermal comfort parameters are determined in a preceding study in fabric form. Physiological measurements (skin and microclimate temperature, microclimate relative humidity, heart rate and sweat amount) and psychological rating results (coolness, dampness and comfort)...

This paper focused on the comfort afforded by 3 models of hearing protection devices. Devices were selected and, after being tested in a real occupational context, evaluated using a questionnaire regarding different comfort indexes. In this way, it was possible to compare the “performance” of the hearing protectors regarding the comfort indexes, and to determine which one, globally, has afforde...

Outdoor spaces are important to sustainable cities because they accommodate pedestrian traffic and outdoor activities, and contribute greatly to urban livability and vitality. In the global context of climate change, outdoor spaces that provide a pleasurable thermal comfort experience for pedestrians effectively improve the quality of urban living. The influence of thermal comfort on outdoor ac...

Subjective thermal comfort plays a critical role in body temperature regulation since this represents the primary stimulus for behavioral thermoregulation. Although both core (Tc) and skin-surface (Tsk) temperatures are known afferent inputs to the thermoregulatory system, the relative contributions of Tc and Tsk to thermal comfort are unknown. We independently altered Tc and Tsk in human subje...

The present work is focused on the control of indoor thermal comfort in buildings equipped with HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems. The occupants’ thermal comfort sensation is addressed here by the well-known comfort index (PMV Predicted Mean Vote). In this context, different strategies for the control algorithms are proposed by using only-one-actuator system that can be a...

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