2002 年 10 巻 1 号 p. 14-19
Wood is a prospective resource from viewpoint of sustainable development. The engineering evaluation of tactile warmth is treated as a good point of wood. The relationship of the contact surface temperature and the thermal effusivity is derived from the theoretical analysis of heat transfer phenomenon and proposed as measures to evaluate the tactile warmth. The measures review some knowledge on tactile warmth of wood. It is found that the sensory warmth of wood has a high and positive linear correlation with the logarithm of the contact surface temperature and that the material with a lower thermal effusivity feels warmer than the material with a higher one. The relationship explains rationally why each wood has large difference of sensory warmth in spite of their small difference of material properties. The relationship also explains the reason why wood has good tactile warmth regardless of the season, which is different from metals.
