Assessment of a Real-Time Prediction Method for High Clothing Thermal Insulation Using a Thermoregulation Model and an Infrared Camera

For evaluating the thermal comfort of occupants, human factors such as clothing thermal insulation (clo level) and metabolic rate (Met) are one of the important parameters as well as environmental factors such as air temperature (Ta) and humidity. In general, a fixed clo level is commonly used for controlling heating, ventilation, and air conditioning using the thermal comfort index. However, a fixed clo level can lead to errors for estimating the thermal comfort of occupants, because clo levels of occupants can vary with time and by season. The present study assesses a method for predicting the clo level of occupants using a thermoregulation model and an infrared (IR) camera. The Tanabe model and the Fanger model were used as the thermoregulation models, and the predicted performance for high clo level (winter clothing) was compared. The skin and clothing temperatures of eight subjects using a non-contact IR camera were measured in a climate chamber. In addition, the measured values were used for the thermoregulation models to predict the clo levels. As a result, the Tanabe model showed a better performance than the Fanger model for predicting clo levels. In addition, all models tended to predict a clo level higher than the traditional method.