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Differences in comfort perception in relation to local and whole body skin wettedness

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Abstract

Relevance of local skin wettedness (w local) to general thermal comfort while wearing clothing was investigated in eight males. In the experiments, skin wettedness of the whole body (w body) was controlled to be around the thermal comfort limit, while w local in different target locations of equal area (anterior and dorsal torso, arms, and thighs) was pushed beyond the comfort limit using special test garments. Subjects walked on a treadmill at 4.5 km h−1 under 22°C 50% RH. Arms and thighs were thermally in discomfort when their w local exceeded 0.32. On the other hand, discomfort in the anterior and dorsal torso was initiated when their w local arrived at 0.42 and 0.45. That is, the relation of the local comfort limit with w local differed depending upon the location. It was observed; however, that general discomfort was not induced when w body remained below 0.36 even if w local was higher than its local comfort limit.

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Acknowledgments

We would express our sincere thanks to our subjects for their time and effort and to W. L. Gore Germany for their helpful technical support. The first author T. Fukazawa gratefully acknowledges research grants from Grand-in-Aid for PD research fellow (14-11488) of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Grand-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (18700573) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan (MEXT), which enabled us to conduct this study. We would like to thank Prof. Dr. Yutaka Tochihara for his support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fukuoka Women’s University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Takako Fukazawa

  2. Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

    George Havenith

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  1. Takako Fukazawa
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  2. George Havenith
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Correspondence to Takako Fukazawa.

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Fukazawa, T., Havenith, G. Differences in comfort perception in relation to local and whole body skin wettedness. Eur J Appl Physiol 106, 15–24 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-009-0983-z

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