Throughout the automotive industry there has been an increasing concern and focus on the thermal comfort of occupants. Manufacturers are continuously striving to improve heating and air conditioning performance to comply with expanding customer needs. To optimize these systems, the technology to acquire data must also be enhanced. In this evaluation, the standard use of isolated thermocouple location technology is compared to utilizing infrared thermal vision in an air conditioning performance assessment. Infrared data on an actual occupant is correlated to breath and air conditioning output temperatures measured by positioned thermocouples. The use of infrared thermal vision highlights various areas of comfort and discomfort experienced by the occupant. The evaluation involves utilizing an infrared thermal vision camera to film an occupant in the vehicle as the following test procedure is run. The vehicle is soaked in full sun load until the interior temperature reaches a minimum of 150 degrees F (65.6 degrees Celsius). The occupant enters the vehicle and takes an initial temperature reading. The air conditioning is turned on to full cold, full fan speed, and recirculation mode. While being filmed, the driver drives for sixty minutes at 30 miles per hour (48.3 kph). The thermocouples acquire data in one minute intervals while the infrared camera films the cooling process of the occupant.
Occupant thermal comfort evaluation
Thermosense XXI ; 1999 ; Orlando,FL,USA
Proc. SPIE ; 3700
1999-03-19
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English