Increasing concern about energy consumption and the simultaneous need for an acceptable thermal environment makes it necessary to estimate in advance what effect different thermal factors will have on the occupants. Temperature measurements alone do not account for all climate effects on the human body and especially not for local effects of convection and radiation. People as well as thermal manikins can detect heat loss changes on local body parts. This fact makes it appropriate to develop measurement methods and computer models with the corresponding working principles and levels of resolution. One purpose of this thesis is to link together results from these various investigation techniques with the aim of assessing different effects of the thermal climate on people. The results can be used to facilitate detailed evaluations of thermal influences both in indoor environments in buildings and in different types of vehicles.

This thesis presents a comprehensive and detailed description of the theories and methods behind full-scale measurements with thermal manikins. This is done with new, extended definitions of the concept of equivalent temperature, and new theories describing equivalent temperature as a vector-valued function. One specific advantage is that the locally measured or simulated results are presented with newly developed “comfort zone diagrams”. These diagrams provide new ways of taking into considera-tion both seat zone qualities as well as the influence of different clothing types on the climate assessment with “clothing-independent” comfort zone diagrams.

Today, different types of computer programs such as CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) are used for product development, simulation and testing of, for instance, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditio-ning) systems, particularly in the building and vehicle industry. Three different climate evaluation methods are used and compared in this thesis: human subjective measure-ments, manikin measurements and computer modelling. A detailed description is presented of how developed simulation methods can be used to evaluate the influence of thermal climate in existing and planned environments. In different climate situations subjective human experiences are compared to heat loss measurements and simulations with thermal manikins. The calculation relationships developed in this research agree well with full-scale measurements and subject experiments in different thermal environments. The use of temperature and flow field data from CFD calculations as input produces acceptable results, especially in relatively homogeneous environments. In more heterogeneous environments the deviations are slightly larger. Possible reasons for this are presented along with suggestions for continued research, new relationships and computer codes.

Ökat intresse för energiförbrukning och samtidiga krav på godtagbar termisk miljö gör det nödvändigt att i förväg kunna bedöma personpåverkan från olika kombinationer av klimatfaktorer. Enbart temperaturmätningar tar inte hänsyn till alla klimateffekter på en människa och speciellt inte för lokala effekter av luftrörelser och strålning. Eftersom såväl personer som termiska dockor (manikiner) kan känna av värmeförlustförändringar på enskilda kroppsdelar, är det lämpligt att mätmetoder och datormodeller med motsvarande arbetsprinciper och upplösningsnivåer utvecklas. Ett syfte med detta avhandlingsarbete är att sammanföra resultat från dessa olika typer av undersöknings-teknik med målet att fastställa effekten av olika termiska klimat på människor. Resultatet kan användas till att göra detaljerade bedömningar av termisk klimatpåverkan i både inomhusmiljö i byggnader och i olika typer av fordon.