Thermal stress is an important factor in many industrial situations, athletic events and military scenarios. It can seriously affect the productivity and the health of the individual and diminish tolerance to other environmental hazards. However, the assessment of the thermal stress and the translation of the stress in terms of physiological and psychological strain is complex. For over a centu...

We address the model-adaptive coupling between computational codes for indoor thermal comfort analysis considering different levels of detail in space and time. Starting with a whole-year simulation, significant periods are interactively identified in terms of a coarse thermal comfort analysis. After refining these critical intervals with respect to the spatial resolution, a multi-segment manik...

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is considered the last preferred solution to an Occupational Safety Health (OSH) system. Brazilian OSH legislation assumes and requires PPE usage to neutralize the possibility of pesticide contamination. This study examines the inadequacy of the PPE used in a tomato crop, particularly from the standpoint of thermal comfort. This study made observations regard...

The thermal environment and air quality in a passenger car can affect driver's and passengers' health, performance and comfort. Due to spatial and temporal variation of state variables and boundary conditions in the vehicle cab, the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) does not have to be designed to provide a uniform environment, especially because of individual differences regardi...

The set points of supervisory control strategy are optimized with respect to energy use and thermal comfort for existing HVAC systems. The set point values of zone temperatures, supply duct static pressure, and supply air temperature are the problem variables, while energy use and thermal comfort are the objective functions. The HVAC system model includes all the individual component models dev...

Buildings account for 40% of total global energy use and contribute towards 30% of total CO2 emissions. Heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are the major sources of energy consumption in buildings, and there has been extensive research focusing on efficiently control them. However, in most cases, this is achieved at the cost of sacrificing thermal, visual and/or IAQ comfort....

The thermoneutral zone is defined as the range of ambient temperatures where the body can maintain its core temperature solely through regulating dry heat loss, i.e., skin blood flow. A living body can only maintain its core temperature when heat production and heat loss are balanced. That means that heat transport from body core to skin must equal heat transport from skin to the environment. T...

Previous studies have revealed that wearers had low skin temperatures and cold and pain sensations in the feet, when using sleeping bags under defined comfort and limit temperatures. To improve wearers' local thermal comfort in the feet, a novel heating sleeping bag (i.e., MARHT) was developed by embedding two heating pads into the traditional sleeping bag (i.e., MARCON) in this region. Seven f...