Abstract
We mapped thermal sensitivities of 318 skin spots over 15 body parts, in 48 college students. The results show that body parts had wide variance in thermal sensitivity. The foot, lower leg and upper chest are much less sensitive than average, while the cheek, neck back, and seat area are very sensitive to both cooling and warming stimuli. To examine any sex differences in thermal sensitivity, body-surface-area-matched males and females were selected. Given comparable body size, no significant thermal sensitivity differences were observed between male and female, except for warming of the forearm and chest. These high-density thermal sensitivity data provide the most comprehensive account of the distribution of cold and warm sensitivity across the human body. They can help to guide future developments in energy-efficient personal comfort systems and wearables.
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- 1.
The numbers of 5 and 7 represent the strength of heating/cooling stimulus. 5 means 31 ± 5 °C stimulus, 7 represents 31 ± 7 °C.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, Department of Energy) DELTA (Delivering Efficient Local Thermal Amenities) program under contract DE-AR0000529. Extended version of this study been published as ‘High-density thermal sensitivity maps of the human body. Building and Environment. 2020, 167: 167435.’
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Luo, M., Zhang, H., Arens, E., Wang, Z. (2020). Micro-Scale Thermal Sensitivity Mappings of Human Body. In: Wang, Z., Zhu, Y., Wang, F., Wang, P., Shen, C., Liu, J. (eds) Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (ISHVAC 2019). ISHVAC 2019. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9520-8_44
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