Assessment of Human Thermal Response when Wearing Body Armor

摘要

With the frequent occurrences of violent and terrorist incidents, the research and development of body armor is getting more attention. Thermal comfort of ballistic body armor directly affects users work efficiency and health conditions especially at high ambient temperature. Therefore assessment of human thermal response wearing body armors (BA) is essential in that it provides basis for BA development and ensure the policeman life safety when discharging duties. In this paper, the thermo-physical properties (i.e., thermal insulation and vapor resistance) of two BAs were assessed via conducting the thermal manikin experiment. An evaluation model to assess the subject thermal comfort was designed to estimate the changes of physiological indexes (i.e., core temperature). The effects of environment temperature, relative humidity, clothing thermal insulation, vapor resistance, and personal physiological conditions were analyzed. Ergonomics experiments were conducted with four healthy male undergraduates wearing the B A in a climate chamber. The core temperature and skin temperature were recorded when subjects conducting activities of different intensities. The evaluation was validated through comparing the simulated results with the ergonomics experiment results. The thermal manikin experiment shows the total vapor resistances calculated by the parallel method are higher than by the serial method; the thermal insulation is higher in room temperature, and smaller in high temperature; the vapor resistance increases with the chamber temperature increasing, and decreases with the chamber humidity increasing. Simulated results show the core temperature and skin temperature increase with ambient temperature increasing or relative humidity increasing. Fine agreement was achieved between the manikin experiment, the simulation and a serial of human experiment results. This paper provide a basis for assessing human thermal response when wearing ballistic body armors made from di