Study And Prediction Of Thermal Comfort Of Medical Disposable Protective Clothing

COVID-19 has continued to spread globally since December 2019.Medical staff must wear specialized medical protective equipment while working to reduce the risk of infection.Medical disposable protective clothing has become an important protective equipment to protect medical staff from virus because of its advantages of good barrier protection effect,light and disposable.However,the thermal comfort of disposable medical protective clothing is not good,wearing it for a long time leads to the phenomenon of heat stress and heat disease easily caused by medical staff in a hightightness environment,which seriously affects the work efficiency of medical staff.Therefore,by studying and predicting the thermal comfort of protective clothing,the problem of clothing comfort is fundamentally analyzed.It is important to evaluate the difference of thermal and humidity comfort of protective clothing and put forward reasonable suggestions to ensure the safety of medical staff.Based on the above background,to predict the thermal comfort of medical disposable protective clothing,this study used five research methods,including material performance test,sweating thermal manikin test,human thermal physiology test,Fiala model simulation and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.The results could be used to evaluate the thermal safety and comfort of protective clothing.It could also provide reasonable suggestions for medical staff to wear protective clothing.The following are the main research contents and relevant conclusions:(1)To compare the material properties of different protective clothing.The basic material property and thermal comfort of four kinds of medical disposable protective clothing were studied.The results showed that the moisture permeability of protective clothing material mainly depended on the aperture size of fabric.The HDPE material had the best comprehensive performance among the four kinds of protective clothing fabrics.Combined with the results of thermal properties of protective clothing,explored the relationship between thermal properties of fabrics and clothing.It has been found that the looseness of protective clothing had greater impact on total thermal resistance than thermal resistance of fabric.Clothing thermal resistance and fabric moisture resistance had great influence on local moisture resistance of protective clothing.The thermal comfort of microporous PE/spunbonded PP protective clothing was better than that of high-density PP.(2)Based on the research results of materials and protective clothing thermal properties,human thermal physiology experiments under multi activity levels wearing different protective clothing were completed.Then,physiological indexes and subjective feelings were recorded and analyzed.The results showed that the thermal and moisture properties of protective clothing had negative effect on the changes of core temperature and average skin temperature.The worse the thermal and humidity performance of protective clothing,the more unstable the thermal state of human body.The amount of sweat was affected by the moisture resistance of fabric and clothing.Subjective evaluation fluctuated with the change of human activities.Thermal sensation under light and equal intensity exercise was mainly affected by the thermal resistance of clothing,while under moderate intensity exercise,it was mainly affected by relative wind speed,sweat evaporation and other factors.(3)The simulation results were compared with the test results of human thermal physiology to verify the accuracy of Fiala model in simulating various activity states of human body and the output results.Fiala model had better simulation effect on core temperature,sweat volume and thermal sensation of human body wearing medical disposable protective clothing.The simulation effect on average skin temperature was within the error range,and the simulation accuracy of light intensity is higher.Fiala model could simulate the influence of activity state change on physiological indicators and subjective evaluation better.In addition,the accuracy of simulation of change degree needed to be improved.(4)Fiala model was used to predict the changes of physiological indexes and subjective sensation under different ambient temperature,activity level and activity duration,a comprehensive evaluation system of thermal and humidity comfort for medical disposable protective clothing was established.In high temperature environment,the human body had higher requirements on wet comfort of protective clothing,and the protective clothing with lower thermal resistance had higher evaluation on safety and comfortable feeling.To sum up,this paper has explored the thermal comfort of medical disposable protective clothing in depth.A comprehensive evaluation method for thermal and humidity comfort of medical disposable protective clothing was proposed,which provided a possibility for comprehensive evaluation of thermal and humidity comfort of medical disposable protective clothing.It also provided scientific guidance for rational wearing of protective clothing.