RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OVERALL THERMAL SENSATION, ACCEPTABILITY AND COMFORT

Thermal sensation, acceptability and comfort are the important responses while evaluating the qualityof thermal environment. Experimental investigations into the relationships between these responseswere performed separately under uniform and non-uniform conditions that produced by local cooling.Thirty male Chinese subjects in college age participated the experiment and reported their local thermalsensation of each body part, overall thermal sensation, acceptability and comfort. Under uniformconditions, overall thermal sensation, acceptability and comfort are correlated closely. Acceptablerange runs from neutral to 1.5 (midpoint between Slightly Warm and Warm) on thermal sensationscale and contains all comfortable and slightly uncomfortable votes on thermal comfort scale. Undernon-uniform conditions overall thermal acceptability and comfort are correlated closely. However,overall thermal sensation is apart from acceptability and comfort and non-uniformity of thermalsensation was found to be the reason for the breakage. Combining the effects of overall thermalsensation and non-uniformity of thermal sensation, a new thermal acceptability model was proposedand the model is validated in uniform and non-uniform conditions over a wide range of whole bodythermal state from neutral to slightly warm.