Abstract
It is said that mean skin temperature correlates closely with thermal sensation. As local skin temperatures are not uniform, when thinking about heat exchange between the human body and the environment and thermal sensation in the entire human body, we have to average local skin temperatures according to some method. Skin temperature is the result of heat exchange between the human body and the surroundings. When we calculate a formula for heat equilibrium between the human body and the environment, it turns out that the formula for mean skin temperature includes the ratios for both skin area and the combined heat transfer coefficient. Recently, a thermal manikin that expresses the heat characteristics of the human body was developed. In this study, we measured local combined heat transfer coefficients with a thermal manikin and calculated new weighting factors for the formula for mean skin temperature. The results obtained in the present study are as follows: 1) When the formula for mean skin temperature is used, the total combined heat transfer coefficient for the human body has to average local combined heat transfer coefficients according to the weighting factor for the surface area. 2) It was found that this weighting factor does not depend on both the air velocity and the difference between the skin surface temperature and air temperature. 3) A new weighting factor for mean skin temperature has been proposed.
