Technology development of breathing thermal manikin and its application and prospect in healthy building

The core concept of healthy building is “people-oriented”. Indoor environment directly affects human health, comfort level, and work efficiency. The intuitive feeling and health effects of indoor occupants should be key evaluation indicators in constructing indoor environment. However, limited by existing experimental methods, testing techniques, and ethical considerations, many experiments related to indoor human health and comfort cannot be carried out on human bodies. In addition, although existing indoor environmental monitoring techniques and equipments can meet parameter control and energy efficiency requirements, they are relatively independent, and have not been integrated on a comprehensive platform. Furthermore, indicators are needed to reflect the comprehensive influence of multiple environmental parameters on the health effects of occupants. Therefore, in order to evaluate human thermal comfort in different environments and determine the effective doses of pathogenic sites in personal exposure studies, advanced and reliable measurement tools must be developed first. As a sophisticated and complex device, thermal manikin plays an important role in the evaluation of indoor health effects. It was originally used to measure and evaluate clothing performance parameters; with the development of control methods and manufacturing technology, many scholars have put forward sweating thermal manikin, thermal regulation manikin, and breathing thermal manikin on the basis of clothing thermal manikin. This paper systematically reviews the progress of research in three aspects, that is, the development history of thermal manikin, the construction of human microenvironment, and the construction of in vitro respiratory tract model. In different development stages and application environments, the implementation method, functions, features, and control methods of thermal manikin show diversity, but its implementation principles are basically similar. That is, it consists of morphological shell, surface skin, heating element, and sensor. The manikin’s structural characteristics and surface thermal plumes seriously affect the human micro-environment. Based on the latest research progress in the field of personal exposure, this paper summarizes the characteristics of flow field and the influencing factors of pollutant exposure in human micro-environment under experimental conditions with varying degrees of human model simplification. After that, it discusses the current status and difficulties of research on human inhalation exposure, and explains the significance of CT scanning, 3D printing, in vitro cell culture, and organ chip technology in the establishment of dose-effect relationship model, as well as their applications in the targeted therapy and biomarker research of lung diseases. On this basis, it talks about the development prospects of health effect research using a thermal manikin that has integrated 3D printing technology and breathing simulation function. This paper systematically reviews the research progress and applications of breathing thermal manikin and various advanced lung models in the fields of building environment and human health. Starting from airflow creation in human micro-environment, in vitro respiratory tract model, in vitro cell culture, and organ chip construction, it sums up the latest research progress of thermal manikin, draws the main conclusions of this field, presents the vision of the future prospects, and points out the limitations and shortcomings in this area. This paper aims to promote the development of more reasonable and accurate environmental control techniques, achieve healthy building, and promote the progress of pathology, pharmacology, and other disciplines.