Investigation of porous material as potential manikin for outdoor thermal comfort index

• Main Author: Kelundapyan, Rhubenthiraan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English; English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: TC Hydraulic engineering. Ocean engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/8341/1/24p%20RHUBENTHIRAAN%20KELUNDAPYAN.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/8341/2/RHUBENTHIRAAN%20KELUNDAPYAN%20COPYRIGHT%20DECLARATION.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/8341/3/RHUBENTHIRAAN%20KELUNDAPYAN%20WATERMARK.pdf; http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/8341/

Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon leads to the increasing of urban environment temperature and higher human thermal discomfort level. The study of the thermal manikin that used to evaluate human discomfort based on thermal comfort indices is very limited. The purpose of this study is to investigate the suitability of porous material such as red clay, white clay and plaster as the potential manikin for outdoor thermal comfort index. Porous materials such as red clay, white clay and plaster have been selected to determine its evaporation rate by correlating it with evaporation rate of human sweat. The surface temperature of porous material was obtained through data logger and the data was correlated with human thermal perception which was designed based on the ASHRAE standard 55 for comfort evaluation. The last objectives of the study was to correlate thermal comfort indices with porous material surface temperature in order to identify suitable porous material for thermal comfort evaluation. This study used two types of statistical analysis methods which were descriptive analysis and bivariate analysis (Pearson correlation). The result shows that, red clay has a good correlation compared to other porous materials in terms of human sweat evaporation rate and human thermal perception which indicated r = 0.583 and r = 0.685 respectively with p<0.01. Furthermore, Heat Index (HI) had a strong relationship and statistically significant with all the tested porous material surface temperature. More precisely, HI had a strong relationship with red clay surface temperature which indicated r = 0.733 with p<0.01. Based on this, it revealed that red clay shows a consistent correlation to all parameter compared to other porous materials and this can be concluded that red clay can be the potential manikin for thermal comfort evaluation. The suitable material selection in this study is believed to help humans have a better understanding of thermal comfort assessment.