Building and Environment 47 (2012) 322e329

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Building and Environment

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On the conformity of oor heating systems with sleeping in the eastern-style beds; physiological responses and thermal comfort assessment
Mehdi Maerefat a, Alireza Zolfaghari a, *, Amir Omidvar b
a b

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 8 March 2011 Received in revised form 30 June 2011 Accepted 9 July 2011 Keywords: Radiant oor heating Sleep Eastern-style beds Thermal sensation Physiological response

a b s t r a c t
Radiant oor heating systems are usually designed in such a way that the sedentary persons feel thermal neutrality. On the other hand, in most of eastern countries, people traditionally tend to directly sit or sleep on the oor. This could arise some limitations in using of the oor heating systems in the countries with such eastern lifestyle. The main focus of this study is on evaluating the physiological responses and thermal comfort of sleeping persons in an eastern-style bed on a heated oor. For this purpose, thermal sensation of sleeping occupants on the heated oor was compared with that of sleeping persons on the conventional beds. The results reveal that under similar thermal conditions, the thermal sensation and skin wettedness of the sleeping persons are obviously higher on the eastern-style beds than on the conventional beds. Therefore, sleeping in an eastern-style bed causes the person to feel more thermal discomfort and also more unpleasantness due to skin wettedness. Furthermore, the results indicate that to get the same level of thermal and wettedness pleasantness on both aforementioned beds, the thermal insulation value of the blanket must be about 0.4 clo lower in the eastern-style bedding arrangement than in the conventional bed. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In recent years, there has been growing interest in using radiant oor heating systems because of their considerable advantages such as energy-saving and comfortable thermal environment [1e4]. In these systems, a signicant part of heat energy is transmitted in radiant mode [5e7]. Therefore, the human body thermal conditions can be considerably inuenced by changing the body posture and the view factor between the heated oor and the human body. On the other side, in most of eastern countries, people traditionally tend to directly sit or sleep on the oor. Moreover, the oor heating and the other air-conditioning systems are commonly designed based on thermal neutrality of the occupants with sedentary conditions. This can impose some limitations in using of the oor heating systems for the people with such eastern lifestyle. In this paper, investigations are made to know whether the oor heating systems are convenient for the persons who tend to sleep traditionally on the oor, and how the thermal and physiological responses of the human body are affected under the mentioned conditions. In the last few years, many researches have investigated the effects of body posture on thermal condition of the human body in

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 98 21 82 88 33 60. E-mail address: alireza.zolfaghari@yahoo.com (A. Zolfaghari). 0360-1323/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.07.008

a radiant heated environment [8e12]. Almost all of these studies were performed for a Korean traditional oor heating system which is called Ondol. Song [10e12] extensively investigated the thermal sensation and physiological parameters of the persons that sat on Ondol. Moreover, in 1993, Choi [8] experimentally studied the bed climate and the physiological response during sleep on Ondol. But in the mentioned study, the thermal sensation of occupants and their thermoregulatory responses such as regulatory sweating and skin wettedness have not been investigated. In the present study, we attempt to investigate the thermal sensation and the physiological response of a person during sleep on a heated oor by using a convenient thermal comfort model. Since 1970, many thermal comfort models have been developed on the basis of the human body energy balance equations. These include the simplied thermal comfort models (such as Fanger [13] well-known model and Gagges model [14]) and complex multisegmented models. The rst multi-segmented model of the human body was developed by Stolwijk [15]. Afterward, several improved multi-segment models have been developed in the literature. These include the Berkeley Comfort Model [16e20] and the models discussed by Tanabe et al. [21], Kaynakli et al. [22,23], Yigit [24,25], Fiala et al. [26], Yi et al. [27], Fengzhi and Yi [28], and Salloum et al. [29]. But, to apply a complex model, a large amount of empirical data is required to simulate each segment of the body. Also, the data must be numerically analyzed to determine the

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thermal parameters of each segment and its subdivided layers. Hence, the complex models could not be employed in thermal comfort standards where the utilization of the complex models is extremely limited. Therefore, among the mentioned models, only two have commonly been used to evaluate thermal sensation [30]. Fangers steady-state model [13] and Gagges two-node transient model [14] are the exclusive thermal sensation models that have been employed in thermal comfort standards [31,32]. But, it should be noted that the mentioned models are not exclusively developed for sleeping thermal conditions. Nevertheless, the body thermal conditions in the sleep duration are distinctly different from sedentary conditions because of decreasing in the metabolic rate, increasing in portion of conductive heat transfer and also increasing of the thermal resistance between the body and the environment. In the last few years, Lin and Deng carried out an extensive research on sleeping thermal environment [33e38]. In 2008, they developed a new thermal comfort model for sleeping environments on the basis of Fangers model [36]. But in their steady-state model, the thermoregulatory mechanisms such as regulatory sweating and vasomotion have not been considered. Furthermore, the effects of conductive heat transfer have not been taken into account in the energy balance equations of the mentioned model. In addition, although the previous studies [39e42] have shown that the sensation of bare and covered parts of the body may be signicantly different, the model of Lin and Deng [36] has considered the human body as one node. As reported in the literature [43e50], the body thermal conditions during sleep can be signicantly affected by the covering. It was reported that the range of thermoneutral temperature during sleep is 28e32 for naked body [43e48] and 20e22.2  C for covered body [49,50]. Thus, the thermal conditions of bare and clothed parts of the body must be considered separately. Recently, Zolfaghari and Maerefat [51] have introduced a new 3-node thermal comfort model on the basis of Gagges transient model. In this model, the physiological parameters and thermoregulatory mechanisms of the human body are considered. Moreover, the mentioned model is able to predict the thermal sensation of bare and covered parts of the human body, separately. Consequently, it seems that the 3-node model can be utilized for evaluating the sensation and physiological response of the human body during sleep.

addition, l is the ratio of the bare skin surface area (Abr) to the total surface area of body (AD)

Abr AD

(4)

Moreover, the ratio of the bare segments mass (mbr) to the body mass (m) is dened as follows

mbr m

(5)

The details for calculation of l and m can be found in Ref. [51]. In many thermal comfort studies, the heat conduction between the body and environment is neglected due to its insignicant effect on thermal balance of the human body under many conventional thermal conditions [52]. Also, the conductive heat loss from the body is not considered in the simplied 3-node model [51]. But, for a sleeping person, the contact area between the human body and bedding system is signicant. Therefore, a conductive term must be implemented in the heat balance equations in order to considering conduction heat transfer between the body and the bedding system. Consequently, the heat storage rate in the core, bare skin and covered skin compartments can be calculated as follows:

Scr M W Qres l Qcrsk;br 1 lQcrsk;cv   Ssk;br Qcrsk;br Qcond;br Qconv;br Qrad;br Qevap;br Ssk;cv Qcrsk;cv Qcond;cv Qconv;cv Qrad;cv Qevap;cv

(6)

(7)

(8)

where and Qres, Qcond, Qconv, Qrad and Qevap are respiratory, conductive, convective, radiative and evaporative heat loss from skin, respectively. Respiration causes two forms of heat exchange with the environment: dry heat loss and latent heat loss. The total heat loss from respiration can be determined by

Qres 0:0014M34 Ta 0:0173M5:87 Pa

(9)

The conductive heat losses from bare and covered skin are calculated as follows 2. The simplied 3-node model In our previous study [51], a simplied three-node and easy-toimplement thermal sensation model was presented based on Gagges standard model. The verication results have shown that this model can accurately estimate the thermal sensation of the bare as well as the covered parts of the body. This model uses three energy balance equations for the bare skin, covered skin and the core to evaluate the thermal comfort conditions of the human body.

Qcond;br

lbed Tsk;br Tf
Rbed 

 (10)  (11)

Qcond;cv

lbed Tsk;cv Tf
Rbed Rcl

Scr

1 amCp;b dTcr AD dt

(1)

Ssk;br

mamCp;b dTsk;br lAD dt

1 mamCp;b dTsk;cv dt 1 lAD

where, lbed is the fraction of the skin surface that is in contact with the bed and it can be obtained from Ref. [53]. Moreover, Rbed and Rcl are the thermal resistance of the bed and clothing, respectively. Also, the convective-radiative and evaporative heat losses from bare and covered skin can be calculated as follows

(2) Qconv;br Qrad;br Qevap;br (3)

Ssk;cv

0 B Tsk;br To 1 lbed @ Rt;br  1 LR wbr Psk;brs Pa C A Rt;br

where, br and cv subscripts are related to bare and clothed skin parts and also Scr, Ssk,br and Ssk,cv are the heat storage rate in the core, bare skin and covered skin compartments, respectively. In

(12)

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Qconv;cv Qrad;cv Qevap;cv

B Tsk;cv To 1 lbed @ Rt;cv im LR wcv Psk;cvs Pa C A Rt;cv  1 (13)

Table 1 Comparison of the 3-node model results for skin and core temperature with the experimental data of Choi [8]. Simulated results of the 3-node model Covered skin temp. ( C) Mean skin temp. ( C) Core temp. ( C) 35.3 34.7 36.8 Experimental data of Choi [8] 35.2 34.9 36.6 Difference between the simulated and empirical data 0.1 0.2 0.2

In addition, the rates of the heat transfer from the core to the bare and covered skin can be estimated by

Qcrsk;br Qcrsk;cl

 

Keff

 _ Cp;bl mbl Tcr Tsk;br  Tcr Tsk;cl

(14) (15)
3. Validation In order to validate the 3-node model for sleeping thermal environment, the simulation results are compared with the experimental data reported in Ref. [8]. Choi [8] measured the skin and rectal temperature of four healthy women while they were sleeping on Ondol oor heating system for 7 h. In the mentioned study, the Ondol oor surface was controlled at a temperature of 29 1  C and the indoor environment was 23.1e24.3  C/60 3% RH. In Table 1, the obtained results of the 3-node model for skin and core temperature are compared with the experimental data of Choi [8]. As it shown in Table 1, the 3-node model is able to accurately predict the thermal conditions of the human body during sleep. 4. Methodology In this paper, the conformity of oor heating systems with sleeping in the eastern-style beds is investigated by using the simplied 3-node model. For this aim, we consider a person with a typical indoor clothing ensemble (Icl 0.8 clo) under sleeping condition in an eastern-style bed on a heated oor. The oor surface temperature is assumed to be 29  C that is in good agreement with experimental values reported in [54]. The ambient relative humidity is assumed to be 50% and the ambient temperature is calculated in such a way that the sedentary persons feel thermal neutrality in the occupied zone. Fig. 1 shows a schematic representation of a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed on heated oor. In this situation, the thermal sensation and physiological responses of the human body are evaluated for investigating the sleep quality of the occupants. Afterward, in Section 5.2, the inuence of the bedding type on the sleep quality of the occupants is investigated. For this aim, two main cases are considered: sleeping in an eastern-style bed (see Fig. 1) and sleeping on a conventional bed (see Fig. 2). In order to study the inuence of the bedding type on the sleep quality, the thermal sensation and physiological responses of the human body are compared for these two cases. In all of these studies, it is assumed that the persons use a common eastern-style mattress for sleeping. The characteristics details of the mentioned mattress have been reported in References [36,37]

_ Keff Cp;bl mbl

_ It should be noted that a, wbr, wcv and mbl depend on the thermoregulatory mechanisms of the human body and they are dened on the basis of cold/warm signals of the human body. Additional information for calculation of these thermoregulatory parameters can be found in Ref. [51]. After calculating the temperatures of each body compartment thermal sensation indices are dened as follows

8 < Tb;c T < 0:4685 Tb;br Tb;c  b;br Tb;h Tb;c Tb;c Tb;br TSENSbr 0:47he;br Tb;br Tb;c : 0:47he;br 0:685 Tb;br Tb;h Tb;h < Tb;br 8 < Tb;c T < 0:4685 T Tb;c  b;cv b;cv Tb;h Tb;c Tb;c Tb;cv 0:47he;cv Tb;cv Tb;c : 0:47he;cv 0:685 Tb;cv Tb;h Tb;h < Tb;cv 8 < 0:4685 Tb Tb;c Tb;h Tb;c 0:47he Tb Tb;c : 0:47he 0:685 Tb Tb;h

Tb;h (16)

TSENScv

Tb;h (17)

TSENSov

Tb < Tb;c Tb;c Tb Tb;h < Tb

Tb;h (18)

where, TSENSbr, TSENScv and TSENSov are, respectively, the thermal sensation of bare parts, covered parts,and overall body. In addition, Tb,br, Tb,cv and Tb are dened as

Tb;br a Tsk;br 1 aTcr Tb;cl a Tsk;cl 1 aTcr Tb a Tsk;ov 1 aTcr

and

(19) (20) (21)

Tsk;ov lTsk;br 1 lTsk;cl

Also,

(22)

Tb;c 0:194M W 36:301 Tb;h 0:347M W 36:669

(23) (24)

By using above relations, we can evaluate the thermal sensation (TSENS) of the bare and covered parts of the body, separately. It should be noted that the TSENS index is based on 11-point numerical scales, as follows: 5 intolerable hot, 4 very hot, 3 hot, 2 warm, 1 slightly warm, 0 neutral sensation, 1 slightly cool, 2, cool, 3 cold, 4 very cold, 5 intolerable cold [52].

Fig. 1. Schematic of sleeping in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor.

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Thermal sensation

1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5

covered nude overall

1.75

Fig. 2. Schematic of sleeping on a conventional bed in a room with the oor heating system.

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 4. Thermal sensation in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket for a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor.

5. Results and discussion People spend about one-third of their life sleeping. Therefore, investigation of the bedroom environment and sleep quality is very important. The sleep quality intensely depends on the environmental and physiological parameters. Persons prefer to sleep under conditions that minimize the physiological effort of regulation for their body. In other words, the activation of the physiological thermoregulatory mechanisms such as sweating, vasodilatation and vasoconstriction can causes thermal unpleasantness for sleeping persons. Understanding the trend of physiological adaptations would be interesting to assess the effects of the bedding type on the sleep quality of a person who slept on a radiant heated oor. When a person sleeps on the heated oor according to eastern lifestyle, the most of his/her body is in direct contact with the radiant oor or the heated mattress surface. This may causes an interruption in heat transfer processes between the human body and the environment. In these circumstances, the accumulated heat energy in the human body should be removed via physiological adaptation processes and this can signicantly affect the sleep quality. So, in order to estimate the sleep quality for the person lied down on the heated oor, the physiological thermal responses of the body should be monitored. Therefore, in the present study in addition to global thermal sensation, we focus on evaluating the adaptation indices such as core temperature, skin temperature and skin wettedness. 5.1. Thermal responses of a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed The thermal sensation of bare and covered parts of the body of a sleeping person in eastern-style bed on heated oor is shown in Fig. 3 for various thermal resistances of the covering blanket. It can be seen that the thermal sensation of bare parts of the body always remains in the acceptable region of thermal comfort. However, thermal sensation of the covered parts of the human body is considerably inuenced by thermal resistance of the covering blanket. As seen in the Fig. 3(b), undesirable thermal sensation due to blanket thermal resistance is appeared in the initial stage of the sleeping period. The initial stage of sleep is a very light sleep, and the slightest disturbance can wake the dreamer at this stage. Using improper blanket for sleeping in eastern-style bed on heated oor can interrupt the whole sleep cycle and prevent the person to experience the deep sleep. So, thermal resistance of the blanket is an effective parameter in evaluation of thermal sensation and sleep quality of the persons.

a
TSENS of nude skin

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 0 30 60 90 Time (min)

Blanket Blanket Blanket Blanket resistance = 0.0 clo resistance = 0.5 clo resistance = 1.0 clo resistance = 1.5 clo

120

150

180

TSENS of covered skin

1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 0 30 60 90 Time (min)

Blanket Blanket Blanket Blanket resistance = 0.0 clo resistance = 0.5 clo resistance = 1.0 clo resistance = 1.5 clo

skin temperature (C)

36 35 34 33 32 31 30
covered nude overall

120

150

180

0.25

0.5

0.75

1.25

1.5

1.75

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 5. Relation between skin temperature and thermal resistance of the blanket for a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor.

Fig. 3. Thermal sensation of bare (a) and covered (b) parts of the human body for a person who slept in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor.

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0.5

Thermal sensation

skin wettedness

0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0

covered nude overall

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5

Case A Case B

0.25

0.5

0.75

1.25

1.5

1.75

-2 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 6. Skin wettedness in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket for a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor.

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 8. Comparison between Case A and Case B: overall thermal sensation in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket.

Also, as shown in Fig. 3, the transition time of the human thermal response is not large. After the person fell asleep, it takes about 1 h for the body to reach steady-state thermal conditions. Therefore, in the following results, we will investigate the thermal conditions of the human body after this transition time. Fig. 4 shows the thermal sensation in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket for a person who slept in eastern-style bed on heated oor. From the results shown in this gure, it is evident that the thermal sensation of sleeping persons is strongly dependent on the thermal insulation value of the blanket. The results indicate that if the thermal insulation value of the blanket used in the eastern-style bedding system is more than 0.2 clo, the thermal sensation of the covered parts of the human body may exceed the permissible thermal comfort region. Also, it should be noted that

the initial abrupt change in Fig. 4 and the following gures occurs due to the thermal resistance of the air gap between the body and the blanket. As mentioned previously, in order to reach a high quality sleep the thermal satisfaction of the body of dreamers is necessary but not enough. For this aim, besides the analyzing the thermal sensation, the trend of fundamental adaptation parameters such as skin temperature and skin wettedness should be checked. Fig. 5 shows the relation between the skin temperature and thermal resistance of blanket for a person who slept in an eastern-style bed on the heated oor. It can be seen that the skin temperature of covered parts of the human body is about 3  C higher than nude skin temperature during sleep under the mentioned conditions.

a
skin temperature (C)

36 35 34 33 32 31 30 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2

Case A Case B

a
TSENS of nude skin

2 1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 0 30 60 90 Time (min)

Blanket Blanket Blanket Blanket resistance = 0.0 clo resistance = 0.5 clo resistance = 1.0 clo resistance = 1.5 clo

120

150

180

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

TSENS of covered skin

1.5 1 0.5 0 -0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 0 30 60 90 Time (min)

Blanket Blanket Blanket Blanket resistance = 0.0 clo resistance = 0.5 clo resistance = 1.0 clo resistance = 1.5 clo

core temperature (C)

37.0 36.8 36.6 36.4 36.2 36.0

Case A Case B

120

150

180

0.25

0.5

0.75

1.25

1.5

1.75

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 9. Comparison between Case A and Case B: overall skin temperature (a) and core temperature (b) in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket.

Fig. 7. Thermal sensation of bare (a) and covered (b) parts of the human body for a person who slept on the conventional bed.

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0.5

skin wettedness

0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2
Case A Case B

Thermal resistance of blanket (clo)

Fig. 10. Comparison between Case A and Case B: overall skin wettedness in relation to thermal resistance of the blanket.

sweating rate and then skin wettedness. It is worth pointing out that the skin wettedness is more closely related to the sense of discomfort or unpleasantness than to temperature sensation [52]. As can be seen from Fig. 10, under similar conditions, the skin wettedness of a person who slept on a conventional bed is about 0.07 lower than the skin wettedness of a person on the easternstyle sleeping arrangements. The results indicate that under similar thermal conditions for the oor heating and the bedding system, the sleeping persons feel more thermal discomfort and also more wettedness unpleasantness in the eastern-style beds than in the conventional beds. Moreover, it should be noted that, in the present study, the temperature of the heated oor is assumed to be about 29  C as recommended by Ref. [6]. But, it is evident that if the heated oor temperature exceeds the aforementioned value, the sleeping persons perceive more critical thermal conditions on the easternstyle beds, and a reduction in the operating oor temperature to less than 29  C may improve the thermal comfort conditions. 6. Conclusions In this paper, the conformity of oor heating systems with sleeping in the eastern-style beds has been investigated by using the simplied 3-node model. The thermal sensation and physiological parameters of the human body has been evaluated in a room with oor heating system for two different conditions: sleeping in an eastern-style bed and sleeping on a conventional bed. The major contribution of the present study is to evaluate the thermal conditions for sleeping persons in an eastern-style bed and compare it with that of sleeping persons on the conventional bed. The main results of this study can be summarized as follows. 1. Under similar personal and environmental conditions, sleeping in an eastern-style bed causes the person to feel a warmer thermal sensation than the person who slept in the conventional bed. 2. In a room heated by radiant oor heating system, the sweating rate and skin wettedness of the sleeping person is obviously higher in the eastern-style beds than the conventional beds. High sweating rate during sleeping period is not a desirable sensation and can decreases sleep quality. 3. To get the same level of thermal and wettedness pleasantness on both eastern-style and conventional beds, the thermal insulation value of the blanket which is used in eastern-style sleeping must be about 0.4 clo lower than that of used for sleeping on conventional beds. 4. When persons use the blanket as a covering during the sleep period, the thermal sensation of the eastern-style sleeping persons is about 0.5 units higher than that of the sleeping persons on the conventional beds. Appendix. Nomenclature

In Fig. 6, the relation between the skin wettedness and thermal resistance of the blanket is shown. It is clearly seen that the skin wettedness rises almost linearly with increasing thermal resistance of the blanket. Moreover, the wettedness of nude skin is signicantly lower than the wettedness of the covered parts of the body. For blanket thermal resistances of 0.2 and 2 clo, the skin wettedness of the covered parts of the body is respectively about two and ve times greater than that of the nude parts. 5.2. The inuence of the bedding type As mentioned previously, in order to investigate the inuence of the bedding type on sleep quality of the occupants, two main cases are considered: Case A-sleeping in an eastern-style bed (Fig. 1) and Case B-sleeping on a conventional bed (Fig. 2). In these cases, a person with a typical indoor clothing ensemble (Icl 0.8 clo) is considered under sleeping condition in a room with a heated oor. The oor surface temperature is assumed to be 29  C and the other personal and environmental parameters are completely similar for these two cases. In Fig. 7, the thermal sensation of bare and covered parts of the body of a sleeping person on a conventional bed is shown for various thermal resistances of the covering blanket. Also, Fig. 8 shows a comparison between Case A and Case B for occupants thermal sensation. It is seen that the persons exhibit a higher sensibility to the blanket thermal resistance change during sleep in the eastern-style beds. Also, as seen in Fig. 8, under similar personal and environmental conditions, the eastern-style sleeping persons always feel warmer than the persons who slept on conventional beds. Moreover, for the blanket thermal resistance higher than 0.5 clo, the thermal sensation of the eastern-style sleeping persons is almost 0.5 units higher than that of the sleeping persons on the conventional beds. In addition, the results indicate that only for the blanket thermal resistance lower than 0.3 clo, the eastern-style sleeping persons feel thermal comfort. In addition, it can be seen that the thermal sensation of sleeping persons on conventional bed remains in thermal comfort region for the thermal resistance of lower than 0.8 clo. In Figs. 9 and 10, the overall skin temperature, core temperature and the overall skin wettedness for sleeping persons on the heated oor (Case A) are compared with that of sleeping persons on the conventional mattress and bed (Case B). As seen in Fig. 9, the skin and core temperatures for a sleeping person in an eastern-style bed are obviously more than that of sleeping person on a conventional bed under similar conditions. This means that the heat accumulation has been occurred in the human body. In this situation, it is expected that the body tend to prevent this via increasing the

AD Cp im Keff LR m M _ mbl Pa

DuBois surface area of nude body, (m2) specic heat, (J/kg C) total vapor permeation efciency of clothing system, (n.d.) effective conductance between core and skin, (W/m2K) Lewis ratio, (z16.5  C/kPa) body mass, (kg) metabolic rate, (W/m2) rate of blood ow, (kg/m2s) water vapor pressure in the air, (kPa)

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Psk(s) Q Qcr-sk Rbed Rcl Rt S t T TSENS w W

water vapor pressure in the saturated air at the skin temperature, (kPa) heat ow rate, (W/m2) heat ow rate from core to skin, (W/m2) the total thermal resistance of mattress and bed (m2  C/W) the total thermal resistance of clothing system (m2  C/W) total sensible thermal resistance, (m2  C/W) heat storage rate, (W/m2) time, (s) temperature, ( C) thermal sensation, (n.d.) skin wettedness, (n.d.) external work done by the muscles, (W/m2)

Greek symbols fraction of body mass concentrated in skin compartment, (n.d.) he evaporative efciency (assumed to be 0.85), (n.d.) l ratio of the bare skin surface area to the total surface area of body, (n.d.) lbed fraction of the skin surface that is in contact with the bed, (n.d.) m ratio of the bare segments mass to the body mass, (n.d.)

Subscripts a air b body bl blood br bare cv covered cond conductive conv convective cr core evap evaporative f oor n neutral o operative ov overall rad radiative res respiration sk skin References
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