Effect of stove asymmetric radiation field on thermal comfort using a multisegmented bioheat model

Abstract The multinode multisegment bioheat model of Salloum et al. [Salloum M, Ghaddar N, Ghali K. A new transient bio-heat model of the human body. In: Proceedings of the ASME 2005 summer heat transfer conference, 17–22 July 2005, San Francisco, Paper no. HT2005-72303] is integrated with a space heat model to study human thermal response when subjected to radiant asymmetry in stove-heated domestic spaces in Lebanon. For any given person position, the overall comfort level is based on Frank et al. model correlations [Frank SM, Srinivasa NR, Bulcao CF, Goldstein DS. Relative contribution of core and cutaneous temperatures to thermal comfort and autonomic responses in humans. Journal of Applied physiology 1999;86(5):1588–93]. The assessment of local comfort level is based on the maximum deviation of the clothed segments skin temperature from the mean skin temperature and its relation to the radiant temperature asymmetry. Experiments were run on human subjects at steady-state conditions to measure the variation of the skin temperature at different locations of the human body segments while standing in an asymmetric thermal radiation field generated by a stove-heating unit. The experiments were conducted to validate the applicability of the bioheat model in predicting skin temperature in asymmetric conditions. The measured skin temperature of various body segments and the radiative asymmetry agreed within ±5% of values predicted by the bioheat model [Salloum M, Ghaddar N, Ghali K. A new transient bio-heat model of the human body. In: Proceedings of the ASME 2005 summer heat transfer conference, 17–22 July 2005, San Francisco, Paper no. HT2005-72303]. The space heat model and the bioheat model are applied to a case study to predict both overall thermal comfort and local thermal discomfort in a typical radiant heat space at different standing positions of the person. Strong thermal discomfort exists within the vicinity of the stove high-temperature surface. The local discomfort is considered at values of maximum SD>1.1 °C derived from consideration of Fanger et al. [Fanger PO, Ipsen BM, Langkilde G, Olesen BW. Comfort limits for asymmetric thermal radiation. Energy and Buildings 1985;8(3):225–36] data of comfort limits and skin temperature measurements for asymmetric thermal radiation.