Cost-effective human comfort manikin with realistic thermal load for studies of convection-driven ventilation systems

Abstract

We present a cost-effective and easy-to-apply measurement method to gather information about the thermal passenger comfort using a specially developed thermal manikin. With the objective to verify the local equivalent temperatures, the thermal manikin was calibrated in a dedicated temperature-controlled box providing homogeneous isothermal boundary conditions with satisfactorily low air velocities and temperature differences. Using infrared thermography in combination with temperature detectors, the surface temperature of different body parts and the surrounding temperature in the chamber were acquired. Based on this data, calibration coefficients were determined revealing almost linear dependencies of the mean surface temperatures on the mean surrounding temperature. As a result, a comfort manikin was simplified, which costs only a fraction of commercially available systems. Hence, the installation on all seats in passenger cabins is feasible, allowing to obtain an instantaneous survey of thermal comfort and cost-effective usage of expensive test facilities. As the manikin provides the obstruction and the spatially realistic distributed heat release of real humans, it is especially suitable for studies of ventilation systems operating in the mixed or natural convection regime.