An investigation of thermal comfort at high humidities
Climate chamber experiments were performed to investigate thermal comfort at high humidities. Subjective reports were recorded for a total of 411 subjects at frequent intervals during the three-hour experiments with 65 selected subjects equipped with instrumentation to record skin wettedness and skin temperature. The exposures ranged from 20 C/60% RH to 26 C/90% RH with two clothing levels, 0.5 and 0.9 clo, and three levels of metabolic activity, 1.2, 1.6, and 4 met. Clear differences in humidity response were not found for sedentary subjects; however, non-sedentary activities produced differences on several subjective scales. These differences, though, are dictated via heat balance and thermoregulation and cannot be separated from humidity-related effects. For metabolic rates 1.6 met and above, these data suggest that no practical limit on humidity will lower the percent dissatisfied below 25%.
- Research Organization:
- Environmental Analytics, Berkeley, CA (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20085607
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ASHRAE Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA (US), 06/18/1999--06/23/1999; Other Information: PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: ASHRAE Transactions: Technical and symposium papers presented at the 1999 annual meeting in Seattle, Washington of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc.; Volume 105, Part 2, by Geshwiler, M.; Harrell, D.; Roberson, T. [eds.], 1360 pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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