Introducing a new thermal comfort model for evaluation of local and overall thermal sensation in non-uniform environments

The standard and conventional thermal comfort models such as Gagge and Fangar models are only applicable in uniform thermal environments and predict the overall thermal sensation based on mean environmental and individual parameters and are not capable of evaluation of local thermal sensations of different body parts. But Under non-uniform conditions, the human body’s segments may experience a wide range of physical parameters such as air temperature, radiation temperature and air velocity. So the response of the people to non-uniform conditions depends on local thermal sensation not on overall thermal sensation. Nowadays, thermal comfort in non-uniform environments may be predicted using experiments in the climate chambers or in automobiles and the proposed models are based on the regression analysis of the experimental data from different subjects in special conditions. So the propose of this work is proposing a model for evaluation of local thermal sensation of different body segments and overall thermal sensation in non-uniform environments. In the new model, temperature and physiological mechanisms of different body parts are obtained by 16-segment Tanabe model and then the local and overall thermal sensations are evaluated by the University of Berkeley model. The comparison of obtained results by new model with available experimental data shows good agreement between them.