Abstract
This paper describes an experimental study of the estimating method of metabolic heat change of during working hours that fluctuates with the lapse of time. Office work in a college office, a construction company and gymnastic facilities was videotaped. From these tapes, the office work in each site was examined and analyzed. The results show that: 1) The total of 36 different body actions were observed in the office work in the afore-mentioned sites, and 2) each of the various body actions were of short time duration. Then, empirical equations of transient metabolic heat were deduced from the beginning of the movement to the end. An estimating method was proposed for the metabolic heat of the office personnel, considering the situation of successive movements in a short time, using the following factors: The metabolic heat of each movement, empirical equations and time duration of movements. In addition, experimented values were compared with theoretically calculated values of a work model. The result shows that the mean value of metabolic heat, obtained by a time weighting method, would potentiality yield significant error.
