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Multi-sector thermo-physiological head simulator for headgear research

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Abstract

A novel thermo-physiological human head simulator for headgear testing was developed by coupling a thermal head manikin with a thermo-physiological model. As the heat flux at head-site is directly measured by the head manikin, this method provides a realistic quantification of the heat transfer phenomena occurring in the headgear, such as moisture absorption-desorption cycles, condensation, or moisture migration across clothing layers. Before coupling, the opportunities of the head manikin for representing the human physiology were evaluated separately. The evaluation revealed reduced precision in forehead and face temperature predictions under extreme heterogeneous temperature distributions and no initial limitation for simulating temperature changes observed in the human physiology. The thermo-physiological model predicted higher sweat rates when applied for coupled than for pure virtual simulations. After coupling, the thermo-physiological human head simulator was validated using eight human experiments. It precisely predicted core, mean skin, and forehead temperatures with average rmsd values within the average experimental standard deviation (rmsd of 0.20 ± 0.15, 0.83 ± 0.34, and 1.04 ± 0.54 °C, respectively). However, in case of forehead, precision was lower for the exposures including activity than for the sedentary exposures. The representation of the human sweat evaporation could be affected by a reduced evaporation efficiency and the manikin sweat dynamics. The industry will benefit from this thermo-physiological human head simulator leading to the development of helmet designs with enhanced thermal comfort and, therefore, with higher acceptance by users.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SBFI C11.0137) under the grant COST Action TU1101 project (http://www.bicycle-helmets.eu/) The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Matthew Morrissey and Rolf Stämpfli from Empa (St. Gallen, Switzerland) for their valuable contribution to programming of the coupling interface and Barbara Koelblen from Empa (St. Gallen, Switzerland) and Warsaw University of Technology (Warsaw, Poland) for providing the validation data and consultation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Natividad Martinez, Agnes Psikuta, René M. Rossi & Simon Annaheim

  2. Department of Applied Thermodynamics, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Natividad Martinez & José Miguel Corberán

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  1. Natividad Martinez
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  2. Agnes Psikuta
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  3. José Miguel Corberán
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  4. René M. Rossi
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  5. Simon Annaheim
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Correspondence to Agnes Psikuta.

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Martinez, N., Psikuta, A., Corberán, J.M. et al. Multi-sector thermo-physiological head simulator for headgear research. Int J Biometeorol 61, 273–285 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1209-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1209-9

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