2007, Piran, Slovenia

Manikins
DEVELOPMENT OF A LYING DOWN SWEATING MANIKIN
John Y. S. Wu and Jintu Fan
Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
Contact person: tcfanjt@inet.polyu.edu.hk
INTRODUCTION
For evaluating the thermal comfort of sleeping bags, mattresses and beddings in terms of total
thermal insulation and moisture vapour resistance, a lying down sweating manikin serves as
an indispensable tool. Most convectional thermal manikins use a two-step subtraction method
to estimate evaporative heat loss, which tends to cause an error as a result of neglecting the
co-existence of heat and moisture vapour transfer. Consequently, sweating manikins with
real-time sweating rate measurement system are preferable as they offer a direct measurement
of the sweating rate. In order to directly measure the sweating rate, many existing sweating
manikins require the measurement of the entire weight of the manikins under suspension.
However, this technique is not only inaccurate, but also inapplicable for lying down manikins
as their lying down posture makes suspension impossible. Furthermore, most existing
manikins are made of hollow copper or plastics, their weights are substantially lower than that
of human body. As a result, the compression caused by the manikin on the sleeping bags,
mattresses or beddings are very different from that of a real person.
METHODS
A novel constant water level sweating rate measurement system was developed for real-time
monitoring of the sweating rate of a manikin. To simulate sweating, a three layer breathable
fabric with a microporous polyteyrafluoroethene (PTFE) Gore-Tex membrane was used to
construct the skin of lying down sweating manikin.
RESULTS
In terms of total thermal insulation and moisture vapour resistance, the coefficients of
variance of all testing samples are lower than 5%.
DISCUSSION
In this paper, we report on a newly developed lying down fabric sweating manikin. It has a
novel direct sweating rate measurement system and has a body weight similar to that of a real
human body. Testing in the nude state and testing of sleeping bags demonstrated that the
manikin has excellent reproducibility and accuracy.
REFERENCES
Fan J., & Qian X. (2004) New functions and applications of Walter, the sweating fabric
manikin, European Journal of Applied Physiology,Vol 92, 641–644
Holmér I. (1995) Heated manikins as a tool for evaluating clothing. Annals of Occupational
Hygiene, vol 3, part 6, pp 809-818
Holmér, I. (2004). Thermal Manikin History. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 92,
614-618
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