Abstract
A movable sweating thermal manikin the size of a two-year-old infant was developed in this study. Heat was supplied through manganese wires of 0.3 mm diameter which were glued to the outside of the manikin. The manikin had 32 sweating pores drilled on its surface at the ratio of one per 110 cm2 of surface area. Water was supplied from a water bath through silicone tubes to each sweating pore with peristaltic pumps. The manikin was dressed in a tight-fitting cotton knit suit and a water-resistant/water vapor-permeable material to control body-surface wettedness. Joints such as shoulders, hips, and knees meant the manikin was able to be placed in a standing, sitting, or walking positions. The surface temperature of the sweating thermal manikin was maintained within 33±0.5°C for the duration of the experiment. Dry heat loss from the nude manikin was in good agreement with the value obtained by subtracting the evaporative heat loss from a 2-year-old Japanese infant’s metabolic rate at rest. The manikin’s sweat rate was able to be controlled at ten different sweating rates. The wettedness of the manikin changed from 0.49 when the water was supplied at 294 g/h•m2 to 0.83 when the water was supplied at 2184 g/h•m2. It was confirmed in the present study that the skin temperature and the wettedness of the newly developed manikin were controlled precisely and the heat exchange between the manikin and the environment simulated those of a two-year-old Japanese infant.
