The thermal environment outdoors affects human comfort and health. Mental and physical performance is reduced at high levels of air temperature being a problem especially in tropical climates. This paper deals with human comfort in the warm-humid city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. The main aim was to examine the influence of urban micrometeorological conditions on people's subjective thermal perceptio...

Social insects show a variety of temperature-guided behaviors. Depending on whether heat reaches the sensillum via air movements (convective heat) or as radiant heat, specific adaptations of thermo-sensitive sensilla are expected. In the present study the morphology and the physiology of thermo-sensitive peg-in-pit sensilla (S. coeloconica) of the leaf-cutting ant Atta vollenweideri were invest...

This paper deals with the indirect evaluation of the natural wet bulb temperature, t (nw), one of the two quantities forming the basis of the well-known wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) index, considered worldwide to be a suitable and user-friendly tool for the preliminary assessment of hot thermal environments. This quantity can be measured by a wet bulb thermometer (a temperature sensor cove...

The main objective of this article is to present the calibration process of a computer model of a naturally-ventilated house built in southern Brazil. The house was monitored over two seven-day periods by using Hobo data loggers. The EnergyPlus computer program was used to create a computer model for the house; parameters related to air infiltration and natural ventilation were modeled by using...

The mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) is one of the most important meteorological parameters governing human energy balance. In this paper, three different methods of obtaining the Tmrt in an outdoor urban setting are compared. Method A is based on integral radiation measurements and angular factors, method B is based on measurements with a 38-mm flat grey globe thermometer and in method C makes ...

In this paper we proposed the novel air-conditioning system which combined induction ventilation and radiant air-conditioning. The indoor terminal device is the radiant induction-unit (RIDU). The RIDU is the induction unit combined with the pore radiant panel on which the copper pipes with rigid aluminum diffusion fins are installed. The two-stage evaporator chiller with the non-azeotropic mixt...