A Thermal Model for Processing Data from Undergarment Sensors in Automatic Control of Actively Heated Clothing

Wojciech Tylman, Rafał Kotas, Marek Kamiński, Sebastian Woźniak and Anna Dąbrowska
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Wojciech Tylman: Department of Microelectronics and Computer Science, Lodz University of Technology, 93-005 Lodz, Poland
Rafał Kotas: Department of Microelectronics and Computer Science, Lodz University of Technology, 93-005 Lodz, Poland
Marek Kamiński: Department of Microelectronics and Computer Science, Lodz University of Technology, 93-005 Lodz, Poland
Sebastian Woźniak: Department of Microelectronics and Computer Science, Lodz University of Technology, 93-005 Lodz, Poland
Anna Dąbrowska: Department of Personal Protective Equipment, Central Institute for Labour Protection—National Research Institute, 90-133 Lodz, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Despite its recent growth in popularity, actively heated clothing still lacks the ability to cope with demanding user scenarios. As many of these deficiencies stem from an absence of automatic control, the authors propose a novel approach using a set of sensors embedded in the clothing to provide data about thermal comfort. Available sensors suffer from a lack of accuracy, as for practical reasons, they cannot be attached to the skin, whose temperature is usually used as a comfort indicator. To determine the magnitude of the problem, the authors conducted experiments, and a thermal model was proposed based on experimental findings; the output from the model was compared with the experimental reference data for three different upper body undergarments. The overall accuracy was found to be good: in most cases, the difference between the computed and reference skin temperatures did not exceed 0.5 °C. Furthermore, the model does not rely on unrealistic assumptions regarding the availability of parameters or measurement data. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to create a thermal model that, when used for input data processing, allows undergarment temperature to be converted to skin temperature, allowing for automatic control of heating insets.

Keywords: actively heated clothing; automatic control; embedded software; thermal comfort; thermal model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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