2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
PREDICTION OF CLOTHING THERMAL INSULATION
BY USING CLOTHING MICROCLIMATE AT 15
ENVIRONMENT
Jeongwha Choi and Joon Hee Park
Department of Clothing & Textiles, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea
Contact person: jh1811@hanmail.net
INTRODUCTION
A knowledge of clothing thermal insulation is necessary to maintain healthy and
reasonable clothing life. Clothing thermal insulation can be measured by taking
measurements on human subjects, by using thermal manikin, and by a conversion
method using an index. Humans experiments are complex and data are often quite
variable, so the thermal manikin method was proposed. This method has excellent
reproducibility, but it is raised a question in that thermal manikins are designed and
built by different groups, resulting from the use of different construction materials,
differences in shape, structure and the number of segments (Konarska et al., 2006).
Moreover, thermal manikins are expensive and differ from real humans. Clothing
weight, one of the conversion methods using an index, is widely used because
measurement is simple and many clothes can be measured at the same time. However,
clothing weight also has demerits, in that it requires periodical correction according to
changes in fabrics and fashion.
The temperature inside clothing is high when wearing clothing with a high thermal
insulation. However, studies about the relation between clothing thermal insulation
and clothing microclimate are limited. The aims of this project were to investigate the
range of clothing microclimate and to examine the relation between clothing
microclimate and physiological responses, when only clothing layer increases in a
controlled condition of fabrics and design effect. To look into these issues, tests were
performed on human subjects and the possibility of clothing microclimate as an index
of clothing thermal insulation was reported.
METHODS
The physiological tests were performed in a climatic -controlled temperature (15 ),
relative humidity (58%) and wind velocity (0.1 m/s). Six physically-active males (22
±2 y, height 177 ±3 cm, mass 66 ±7 kg, body surface area 1.82 ±0.1 m 2 ) participated
in trials and provided informed consent. Trials were conducted at the same time each
day.
Clothing microclimate and physiological responses were investigated using the upper
and lower clothing of same material and design from 1 layer to 3 layers. Experimental
clothing was the upper and lower training wear (PET 100%) and was 1 layer
(310±15g/m 2 ), 2 layers (630±27g/m 2 ), 3 layers (950±44g/m 2 ) clothing of different
size. Besides, each subject wore same socks, underpants and footwear and carried out
tests on two of the three ensembles.
Skin temperature, rectal temperature, clothing microclimate (temperature inside
clothing at 6 sites and humidity inside clothing at 2 sites), the innermost surface and
the outermost surface temperature at the chest (K923, Takara Inc., Japan), metabolism
(Quark b 2 , COSMED Inc., Italy) and body weight loss (F150S, Sartorius Corp.,
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