Effects of artificially induced heat acclimatization on subjects' thermal and air movement preferences

Abstract

There is evidence suggesting that subjects become accustomed to levels of warmth prevailing within buildings on time scales of weeks to months. Such exposure will influence in occupants' expectation of their thermal environments (i.e. thermal history). This paper investigates the effects of short-term physiological acclimatization on subjects' perception of thermal and air movement preferences. Subjective thermal perception experiments were carried out in a climate chamber to evaluate temperature and air movement acceptability across a range of simulated hot-humid conditions. Experiments were carried out during the winter season in Japan so that subjects, from different nationalities, could ..