2007, Piran, Slovenia

Thermal comfort
Figure 2. Skin wettedness (bottom) and thermal comfort sensation (top) in the whole
body plotted against ear canal temperature.
local and whole body sensations. The comfort limits for the front and back trunks were found
to be 0.47 and 0.55, respectively. On the other hand, for the arms and thighs, thermal comfort
limits were both around 0.37, which were almost the same as that of the whole body.
These results indicate that the regional thermal comfort limits depend upon the location. One
feels thermal discomfort locally (e.g., in the arms or in thighs), even though the thermal
comfort of the whole body is accomplished because the skin wettedness of the whole body is
maintained lower than the comfort limit in this test. This indicates that, in order to maintain
the human body totally in thermal comfort, proper care must be taken to keep the skin
wettedness of extremities at a low value.
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