Abstract
The thermal environment is an essential factor that affects sleep quality. In many circumstances, the bed microenvironment is more important than the ambient environment because of the large covered area of the human body and the close contact between the bedding system and the human body. The main objective of this research is to establish an effective method to determine bedding system insulation. A thermal manikin was used in the measurement of bedding system insulation. Three different types of quilts, which were filled with cotton, polyester and duvet respectively, were chosen to be tested. In total ten different quilts with different materials and weights were involved in the test. Four regular arrangements of covers were chosen with coverage rates of 94.1%, 85.9%, 70.6%, and 54.4% to test. A total of 64 bedding systems were tested to build an effective method to determine the bedding system insulation. On the basis of test data, the change of bedding system insulation with coverage was found to be nonlinear. Exponential fitting was applied to establish an insulation evaluation method for bedding system insulation. In addition, the effects of quilt cover and sleepwear on bedding system insulation were discussed and thermal insulation increment caused by quilt cover and sleepwear were estimated. The relationships between neutral indoor temperature and weight per unit area of the quilt for different coverage rates have been quantified based on existing subject experiments. This research provides an effective method to determine bedding system insulation, which can be widely used in thermal comfort research and HVAC system design.
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Abbreviations
- f :
-
area fraction of the segment
- i :
-
number of the body-segment
- I :
-
insulation of bedding system excluding quilt cover and sleepwear (clo)
- I s :
-
insulation of sleepwear (clo)
- I T :
-
total insulation of bedding system (clo)
- ∆I c :
-
increment of bedding system insulation caused by quilt cover (clo)
- ∆I s :
-
increment of bedding system insulation caused by sleepwear (clo)
- K :
-
unit constant equals 6.45 clo·W/(m2·K)
- P c :
-
coverage rate
- Q sk :
-
total heat flow rate on the manikin surface (W/m2)
- q sk :
-
heat flow rate of the segment (W/m2)
- R T :
-
total resistance of the bedding system (m2·K/W)
- R b :
-
thermal resistance between uncovered body and environment (K/W)
- R c :
-
thermal resistance caused by covering (K/W)
- R m :
-
thermal resistance caused by mattress (K/W)
- t o :
-
operative temperature of the environment (°C)
- t sk :
-
skin temperature of thermal manikin (°C)
- w :
-
weight per area of a quilt or other bedding system (kg/m2)
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52178079, No. 51838007), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2021M701940), and Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar Program (No. 2020SM003).
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Zhang, N., Cao, B. & Zhu, Y. An effective method to determine bedding system insulation based on measured data. Build. Simul. 16, 121–132 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-022-0916-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-022-0916-x