An overview of measuring methods and international standards in the field of thermal environment, thermal characteristics of the clothing ensembles and the human subjects assessment of the thermal comfort

Abstract

A continuous development of the terminology, materials, measuring instruments and methods, requires the implementation of the unified specifications and definition of the standards, so that clear quality management system could be established, for both the production systems and testing methods. In the field of the measurements of thermal characteristics of the environment and the clothing garments or ensembles, as well as in the field of thermophysiology of the human body, the most significant international standards are published by the international organizations for standardization such as ASTM International, ISO and ASHRAE. Those international standards define the insulation characteristics of different materials, the clothing garments and the ensembles, the thermal and the water-vapour resistance, the measuring systems and the measuring protocol, the testing requirements, the PMV and PPD indexes, the environments and the interpretation of the measured results. The standards in the field of the ergonomics of the thermal environments define both the parameters and the measuring methods, which affect the human thermoregulation in some specific environment, while other standards describe the prediction of the thermal protection based on those parameters, or respectively how to predict either thermal comfort or discomfort and the health risks which could affect human subjects in particular thermal environments.