Measurements of clothing insulation with a thermal manikin operating under the thermal comfort regulation mode: comparative analysis of the calculation methods.

The present work is dedicated to a comparative analysis of calculation methods about clothing insulation with a thermal manikin operating under the thermal comfort regulation mode. The serial, global, and parallel calculation methods are considered and the thermal insulation results for garments (30) and ensembles (9) are discussed. The serial and parallel methods presents the higher and lower values, respectively, and the differences were sometimes significant. Considering the results for the effective thermal insulation, the mean values of the relative differences between the serial and global methods were 25.7% for the daily wear garments, 45.2% for the cold protective garments and 38.5% for the ensembles. The corresponding mean values for the global and parallel methods were 8.7, 15.8, and 10.5%, respectively. Since any uneven clothing insulation is to be expected as a source of error, particular care must be required when the calculation methods deal with cold protective clothing.