Abstract
Purpose of this study is first to show the effects of vertical air temperature differences on thermal comfort and physiological responses, and second to examine the acceptable vertical air temperature differences. The experiments were carried out at the B. R. I. thermal environmental chamber. In this experiments, 40 subjects (20 males and 20 females) were exposed at 11 (half of subjects in summer) or 12 (half in winter) test conditions. In this chamber, the room was divided two parts (upper part and lower part) at the height of waist, then, the air temperature of two parts were controlled individually. The subjects voted each 5min. about his thermal feeling, and 12 skin surface temperatures, the oral temperature and in some subjects the rectal temperature were measured every minute. From this experiments, it was found that the upper part temperature affects the thermal sensation more strongly than lower part temperature, and that the average temperature of two parts affects the physiological responses more strongly than the temperature differences between two parts. In summer, the acceptable temperature differences drawn by this study are 4°C in the case that the upper part temperature is higher than the lower part temperature, and 6°C or more in the case that the lower part temperature is higher than the upper part.
