Gender Differences In Thermal Comfort At Differences Temperatures

Under the same indoor environment,the responses of building users are often significantly different.An indoor environment considered satisfactory by one group may make another group dissatisfied.The main input variables for the model are metabolic rate,however,the accuracy of the variables is in general poorly defined.Nevertheless,standard reference values for the metabolic rate are tabulated and used worldwide.With respect to the metabolic rate,the metabolic equivalent is used to express the metabolic cost of an activity relative to the resting metabolic rate,and its value is set by convention based on the resting metabolic rate of males.This may have significant consequences may overestimate resting heat production of women up to 35%.Thus,current indoor climate standards may intrinsically misrepresent thermal demand of the female.The main research work and results are as follows:Firstly,we chose the dormitory building of a university as the research object,and the occupants in winter with district heating had no direct way to control the indoor thermal environment,in summer the occupants could control the indoor thermal environment by adjusting air-conditioning,and analyzes the thermal comfort differences between genders.The results show that the males have a lower air-conditioning temperature setting,indoor air temperature,and clothing insulation than that of females in summer and the males prefer cooler environments.The neutral temperatures of males and females are 24 ℃ and 25.1 ℃,respectively.The proportion of open doors is higher and the average indoor air temperature is lower than that of females,and the females prefer warmer environments.Secondly,forty healthy colledges students(20 males and 20 females)participated in all test conditions.The all test conditions included 14/16/18/20/24/26/28/30/32/34 ℃,subjective questionnaires and physiological parameters were measured during the experiment.The subjective questionnaires measuring thermal sensation,thermal comfort,thermal acceptability,thermal preferences,etc.The physiological parameters measuring metabolic rate,skin blood flow,skin temperature,heart rate.The results show that in cool conditions,the females have a lower thermal sensation vote,a higher percentage of dissatisfaction,lower skin temperature than males.It is no significant that skin blood flow between genders.In neutral conditions,there is no difference between males and females.In warm conditions,the males have a higher thermal sensation votes,a higher percentage of dissatisfaction,more thermal discomrt than males.It is significantly that males have higher skin blood flow and skin wettedness.The metabolic rate of males is higher than that of females in all conditions.Finally,the subjective and physiological responses of males and females at different conditions were analyzed,and compared with the predicted values of PMV.The results show that the neutral temperature of males and females is between 24 and 26 ℃,and the predicted PMV value is lower than the actual thermal sensation of the subject.The acceptable ranges of 80% are 20.28 to 27.47 ℃ for males and 21.34 to 28.14 ℃ for females.The subject’s comfort in the warm conditions is closely related to the skin wettedness,and the blood flow and skin wettedness of men are significantly greater than that of women.The skin temperature in the range of 29 to 34 ℃ is approximately quadratic polynomial relationship with the average skin temperature.When the skin temperature exceeds 34 ℃,it is approximately an exponential function.