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Validation of the thermophysiological model by Fiala for prediction of local skin temperatures

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Abstract

The most complete and realistic physiological data are derived from direct measurements during human experiments; however, they present some limitations such as ethical concerns, time and cost burden. Thermophysiological models are able to predict human thermal response in a wide range of environmental conditions, but their use is limited due to lack of validation. The aim of this work was to validate the thermophysiological model by Fiala for prediction of local skin temperatures against a dedicated database containing 43 different human experiments representing a wide range of conditions. The validation was conducted based on root-mean-square deviation (rmsd) and bias. The thermophysiological model by Fiala showed a good precision when predicting core and mean skin temperature (rmsd 0.26 and 0.92 °C, respectively) and also local skin temperatures for most body sites (average rmsd for local skin temperatures 1.32 °C). However, an increased deviation of the predictions was observed for the forehead skin temperature (rmsd of 1.63 °C) and for the thigh during exercising exposures (rmsd of 1.41 °C). Possible reasons for the observed deviations are lack of information on measurement circumstances (hair, head coverage interference) or an overestimation of the sweat evaporative cooling capacity for the head and thigh, respectively. This work has highlighted the importance of collecting details about the clothing worn and how and where the sensors were attached to the skin for achieving more precise results in the simulations.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SBFI C11.0137) under the grant COST Action TU1101 project (http://www.bicycle-helmets.eu/). The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Dusan Fiala from Ergonsim (Germany) for his interesting and open discussion, Dr. Matthew Morrissey from Empa (St. Gallen, Switzerland) for his valuable inputs about evaporative cooling within clothing and Karin Lundgren-Kownacki from Lund University (Lund, Sweden) for her expert interpretation of experimental data in the heat. The authors thank all laboratories kindly providing human experimental data, within bygone COST Action 730: Towards a Universal Thermal Climate Index UTCI for Assessing the Thermal Environment of the Human Being (http://www.utci.org/cost.php), especially to Hanu Rintamäki from Finnish Institute for Occupational Health (Oulu, Finland), Igor Mekjavic from Josef Stefan Institute (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and Emiel den Hartog from TNO (The Hague, Netherlands).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Protection and Physiology, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Lerchenfeldstrasse 5, CH-9014, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Natividad Martínez, Agnes Psikuta, René Michel Rossi & Simon Annaheim

  2. Department of Applied Thermodynamics, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Camino de Vera, s/n 46022, Valencia, Spain

    Natividad Martínez & José Miguel Corberán

  3. Thermal Environment Laboratory, Department of Design Sciences, Lund University, Sölvegatan 26, SE-223 62, Lund, Sweden

    Kalev Kuklane

  4. Biophysics and Medical Physics Group, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 15, Valencia, Spain

    José Ignacio Priego Quesada, Rosa María Cibrián Ortiz de Anda & Rosario Salvador Palmer

  5. Research Group in Sports Biomechanics (GIBD), Department of Physical Education and Sports, University of Valencia, Facultat de Ciències de l’Activitat Física i l’Esport, Gascó Oliag, 3, 46010, Valencia, Spain

    Pedro Pérez Soriano

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  1. Natividad Martínez
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  2. Agnes Psikuta
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  4. José Ignacio Priego Quesada
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Correspondence to Agnes Psikuta.

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Martínez, N., Psikuta, A., Kuklane, K. et al. Validation of the thermophysiological model by Fiala for prediction of local skin temperatures. Int J Biometeorol 60, 1969–1982 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1184-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-016-1184-1

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