• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.63-74
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• 2000

This paper is to clarify a thermal physiological index that can account for the effects of local thermal environment. For this purpose two young female subjects exposing themselves to the above while sitting on a chair, sitting on the floor and lying on the floor were measured. These three representative postures accompanied the different contact surface areas, thereby the heat conduction rate between the floor and subject was quantitatively measured for each posture. It made the present study deal with the effect of heat conduction concerning the modified mean skin temperature and finally propose new weighting coefficients for the mean skin temperature calculation based on the Hardy & DuBois' formulas. In order to verify the proposed model, the experiment was carried out using a floor heating system. The comparison between the experimental result and prediction revealed that the proposed model should be about 10% more accurate than the conventional one in the case of lying on the floor which the heat conduction effect becomes important.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.81-89
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• 2002

The objective of this paper is to clarify the combined effect of heat conduction, air temperature and thermal radiation on the person seated on the floor under operation of floor heating system. Experiments were conducted for summer seasons under 8 kinds of condition: combinations of air temperature $20^{\circ}C$, $22.5^{\circ}C$ and floor temperature $20^{\circ}C$, $22.5^{\circ}C$, $30^{\circ}C$, $35^{\circ}C$ and $40^{\circ}C$ under still air. Japanese and Koreans were adopted as subjects. To evaluate the effect of conduction operative temperature modified by heat conduction was derived from the human heat balance equation. New weighting coefficients were estimated from the modified operative temperature and modified mean skin temperature. As for thermal sensation the modified operative temperature more significantly correlated to that sensation each heat transfer processes. As the floor temperature is higher, the human conduction heat gain from floor increase and the dry heat from the human body decrease.