The comparison of thermal properties of protective clothing using dry and sweating manikins

Författare

Chuansi Gao
Ingvar Holmér
Jintu Fan
Xianfu Wan
John YS Wu
George Havenith

Summary, in English

The thermal insulation of clothing is commonly determined by dry thermal manikins either made of plastic or metal. For the determination of evaporative resistance of clothing ensemble, there exist three types of manikin methods: pre-wetted underwear or “skin” covered on dry manikins, the manikin with regulated constant water supply to the “skin” surface and the sweating fabric manikin based on a water filled body covered with waterproof but vapour permeable fabrics. The purpose of this study was to compare thermal insulation and moisture evaporative resistance of a set of protective clothing measured using different type of manikins. The total thermal insulation of seven EU project ensembles (Subzero A and B, Permeable (PERM), Impermeable (IMP), Nomex coverall (with two types of underwear) and Cotton coverall) were measured using the manikin Tore in Sweden, the sweating fabric manikin Walter in Hong Kong, and the manikin Newton in the UK. The results showed that total thermal insulation is reproducible for the seven clothing ensembles measured on the manikins Walter and Tore. The coefficient of variance is less than 8%. Nomex coverall with cotton underwear has 8-16% higher total insulation than that with polypropylene underwear. The apparent evaporative resistance of the impermeable coverall with cotton underwear measured on Newton was 44.5% lower than the evaporative resistance measured on Walter. The effect of condensation and conduction at room temperature environment and measuring time allowing full accumulation of moisture in clothing ensembles might be two important factors affecting the evaporative resistance.

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