HECOL370 Lecture Notes - Lecture 27: Thermal Transmittance, Thermal Comfort, Thermal Insulation
Document Summary
Human comfort is a mental state of ease or well-being, a state of balance or equilibrium that exists b/w a person and their environment. Typical de nitions of comfort explicitly tie the concept of human comfort to human- environment interactions. In human ecology, we consider clothing as our nearest environment & critical to human comfort. Clothing moderates the person/environment relationship, creating a micro-environment. Interactions b/w the micro-environment and the environment outside the clothing depends on many clothing-related factors. These factors can be measured, but to understand their e ects fully, measurement of comfort should involve human participants. Theories of clothing comfort help explain how and why clothing contributes to (or detracts from) human comfort. Most theories are based on the clothing triad, or the interactions b/w. To understand clothing comfort, we need to understand each component of the triad and the interactions among them. Comfort is de ned as the absence of discomfort of the absence of negative sensations.