2007, Piran, Slovenia

Environmental Ergonomics XII
Igor B. Mekjavic, Stelios N. Kounalakis & Nigel A.S. Taylor (Eds.), © BIOMED, Ljubljana 2007
A SWEATING THERMAL TORSO MANIKIN INCORPORATING
PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SWEATING
Mitja Babič 1 , Jadran Lenarčič 1 , Leon Žlajpah 1 , Nigel A.S. Taylor 2 , Borut Lenart 1 , Miro
Vrhovec 1 , Bernard Redotier 3 , Victor Candas 4 & Igor B. Mekjavic 1
1 Department of Automation, Biocybernetics and Robotics, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana,
Slovenia
2 School of Health Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
3 Decathlon & 4 CNRS, Strasbourg, France
INTRODUCTION
A sweating thermal torso manikin was developed for evaluating the thermal and evaporative
resistance of clothes. The temporal regulation of sweating may be controlled by algorithms
derived from human experiments, whereby the onsett and gain of the sweating response is a
function of the manikin »core« and »skin« temperatures. The spatial pattern of sweating may
be regulated according to the observed pattern of sweating on the torso in human subjects (see
Machaido-Moreira et al., this volume).
METHODS AND RESULTS
The manikin system is composed of a personal computer, electrical control system, sweating
system and the thermal torso manikin. The manikin is composed of 16 segments arranged in
two rows. Each segment has a core and a skin element. The core element is a 12.5x2.5x1.5
mm thin cooper plate on which eight heaters (RTO 20), two sweat glands and a core
temperature sensor (PT 1000), are mounted. The skin element is a 0.8 cm thick layer of resin,
with similar thermal characteristics as skin. Each skin element has a PT 100 temperature
sensor embedded in the surface. The measurement and control process treat each segment as
an autonomous part.
Figure 1: Sweating thermal torso manikin system: control unit (left panel) and torso manikin (right
panel)
DISCUSSION
The sweating thermal torso manikin appropriately simulates the spatial and temporal heal loss
from the torso observed in humans (Machaido-Moreira et al., this volume). Calculations of
thermal and evaporative resistancefor specific garments have also been validated with with
results obtained on other manikins.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported, in part, by Decathlon (France).
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