2020 havenith et al ethnicity and comfort.pdf (8.47 MB)
Higher comfort temperature preferences for anthropometrically matched Chinese and Japanese versus white-western-middle-European individuals using a personal comfort / cooling system
journal contribution
posted on 2020-08-14, 13:40 authored by George HavenithGeorge Havenith, Katy Griggs, Yifen Qiu, Lucy Dorman, Vallavan Kulasekaran, Simon HodderSimon HodderPurpose: To investigate potential differences in preferred Personal Comfort Systems
(PCS) settings of Japanese and Han-Chinese versus white-western-middleEuropeans. Method: A series of five experiments with similar methodology is reported
that allowed participants to self-select their preferred PCS outlet air temperature in a
warm controlled climatic chamber setup with and without solar radiation. Test groups
were matched for age, height, weight, body-surface-area and body-mass-index to
remove the influence of these confounding factors on the results. Participants were
first exposed to solar radiation (exp-1-4; simulating glazed building without proper
shading or a car) before starting to control the outlet temperature of the PCS, or (exp5, simulating warm building) were exposed to a warm room temperature and
immediately could control the PCS. Ethnicity effects were studied through the chosen
preferred PCS outlet temperatures and the microclimate temperature close to the
participants’ chest.
Results: In all experiments, Asian groups selected a PCS outlet temperature
significantly higher, on average 5ºC, leading to a 1.9ºC higher microclimate
temperature at chest level. While absolute selected temperatures of the PCS differed
between experiments, related to different designs of the PCS and climate conditions,
no interaction between ethnicity and experiment was present.
Conclusions: Despite removing important confounding factors that could explain
earlier observed differences between Asian and white western middle-European
ethnicities tested, a substantial, consistently higher thermal preference temperature
of the PCS was found in the two Asian groups. This has implications for the design
parameters of PCS for use in offices or air-conditioning systems in cars.
History
School
- Design and Creative Arts
Department
- Design
Published in
Building and EnvironmentVolume
183Publisher
Elsevier LtdVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2020-07-24Publication date
2020-08-09Copyright date
2020ISSN
0360-1323Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Prof George Havenith. Deposit date: 11 August 2020Article number
107162Usage metrics
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