First principles modeling of thermal sensation responses in steady-state and transient conditions

This is the third of a trilogy of papers, from the PhD work of Fiala, supervised by Lomas, that brings an engineering approach to thermal comfort modelling. The first paper in 1999, appeared in the Journal of Applied Physiology and the second, in this RAE period, was ‘Fiala D, Lomas KJ and Stohrer M, Computer prediction of human thermoregulatory and temperature responses to a wide range of environmental conditions, Int Journal of Biometeorology (Int Soc B), Vol 45, pp 143-159, (2001), ISSN 0020-7128’. Over 14 other journal and conference papers in this RAE period, with Fiala or Lomas, or both, as (co) authors, has brought the work to the attention of researchers in many fields of endeavour. There have been around 11 conference and seminar invitations. The work was advanced via an EPSRC grant, Asymmetric radiant fields and human thermal comfort (GR/R03495/01), which was completed in 2004. The work was rated by referees as Internationally Leading for both its Research Quality and Scientific Impact. The recently completed EPSRC project, which applies the model to the design of window systems, Vacuum window design optimisation and thermal comfort implications (GR/S08633/01), was rated by referees as Tending to Internationally Leading for its Research Quality and its Scientific Impact. The model has been used by many outside the buildings field, for example: NASA; Transsolar, Germany; Michigan Technical University; Technical University of Eindhoven; Thermo Analytics, Calvet, MI, USA; WL Gore (eg Goretex) UK; Technical University of Denmark; MTRE, Israel; the US Air Force Research Laboratories; and the World Meteorological Office that is using the model to develop a Universal Comfort Index for use in weather reporting (See also RA5 Esteem). Stohrer (University of Applied Sciences, Stuttgart) provided financial support and some co-supervision of Fiala's PhD work.