| Author: | Xie, Kexin |
| Title: | Human physiology responses to non-uniform and asymmetric thermal environments outdoors |
| Advisors: | Niu, Jianlei (BEEE) |
| Degree: | M.Eng. |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Department: | Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering |
| Pages: | v, 91 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | As important as it is for promoting the sustainable growth of cities, ensuring that residents have nice and comfortable outdoor thermal surroundings is also advantageous to their physical and emotional well-being. Non-uniform and asymmetric outdoor environments are very common in life, however few studies have evaluated the human body's thermal perception and physiological responses in such environments. Since current thermal comfort models are primarily based on data collected from indoors, they are not applicable and accurate for evaluating human subjective thermal responses in outdoor settings. This means that accurately assessing people's dynamic thermal perception in non-uniform and asymmetric thermal environments remains a challenge. To improve people’s thermal comfort condition in urban areas, this study measured environmental parameters (i.e., Ta, RH, v, Tmrt), and investigated human thermal perceptions (e.g., thermal sensation and thermal comfort), physiological responses (e.g., local skin temperature), and then explore the empirical relationship between physiological responses and thermal sensations. Relevant data are collected and analyzed to reveal prediction methods for thermal sensations under different outdoor microclimate conditions. This study focuses on the non-uniform thermal responses when human body reaches a relatively steady state. This experiment analyzed the environmental parameters, thermal sensation, and physiological response data of the participants after they were exposed to direct sunlight in an outdoor environment for 10 minutes. The findings demonstrated outdoor environmental parameters are generally non-uniform and asymmetrical, and these characteristics will directly affect the thermal perception of the human body. By collecting physiological responses and subjective questionnaires from participants, the study found a connection between thermal perception and skin temperature and demonstrated their correlation through Spearman analysis. In order to anticipate people's thermal sensation in non-uniform and asymmetric outdoor environments, this research developed a model to forecast subjects' local thermal perception in non-uniform outdoor environments when the human body reaches a relatively steady state. In addition, the effectiveness of the model was be verified. The outcomes of this research could enhance our comprehension of how individuals perceive and react to different thermal circumstances. Through in-depth study of the human body's adaptive response to changes in outdoor thermal conditions, it can provide a more reliable reference for city planning and architectural design to create a more comfortable urban space. In addition, the findings obtained from this experiment will serve as a foundation for the development of an outdoor thermal comfort model. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7761.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 3.62 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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