TY - JOUR
T1 - Development and Validation of an Empirical Equation to Predict Wet Fabric Skin Surface Temperature of Thermal Manikins
AU - Fa-Ming Wang, Kalev Kuklane, Chuan-Si Gao, Ingvar Holmér & George Havenith
JO - Journal of Fiber Bioengineering and Informatics
VL - 1
SP - 9
EP - 15
PY - 2010
DA - 2010/03
SN - 3
DO - http://doi.org/10.3993/jfbi06201002
UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/jfbi/4938.html
KW - Fabric skin
KW - thermal manikin
KW - skin surface temperature
KW - isothermal
KW - empirical equation
KW - clothing ensemble
AB - Thermal manikins are useful tools to study clothing comfort and environmental ergonomics. The simulation of sweating
 can be achieved by putting a highly wicking stretchable knit fabric “skin” on top of the manikin. However, the addition 
of such a fabric skin makes it difficult to accurately measure the skin surface temperature. Moreover, it takes considerable 
amount of time to measure the fabric skin surface temperature at each test. At present the attachment of temperature 
sensors to the wet fabric skin is still a challenge. The distance of the sensors to the fabric skin could significantly 
influence the temperature and relative humidity values of the wet skin surface. Hence, we conducted an intensive skin 
study on a dry thermal manikin to investigate the relationships among the nude manikin surface temperature, heat 
losses and the fabric skin surface temperature. An empirical equation was developed and validated on the thermal 
manikin ‘Tore’ at Lund University. The empirical equation at an ambient temperature 34.0 °C is T_{sk} =34.00-0.0103HL. 
This equation can be used to enhance the prediction accuracy of wet fabric skin surface temperature and the calculation 
of clothing evaporative resistance.