(Thermal) Comfort and its Specific Influencing Factors

Authors

Dr. Alexandre Gentner, Carole Favart, Toyota Motor Europe, Zaventem;
Fabian Prinz, MSc, Thomas Hirn, MSc, Gudrun M. I. Voß, MSc, Alexander Kirmas, MSc, Damian Backes, MSc, Dr. Stefan Ladwig, Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika), RWTH Aachen University

Summary

For passengers in private or public transportation systems, comfort and particularly thermal comfort are of major interest. Available comfort models are already used to correlate comfort to influencing factors. However, the available models do not fully account for specific influences as scent, ambient light and thermal radiation. To obtain a deeper understanding regarding thermal sensation, these specific influencing factors were examined in two user studies in two climate chambers. The first study used scent and light as independent variables while the second study varied the type of thermal radiation. The results reveal significant impact of the independent variables on the subjective perception and are therefore suggested for integration into future thermal comfort models.

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