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ABSTRACT

The climatic change happened in the last years in the globe has caused concem to researchers and it has originated several studies about the climate and human being’s behavior, especially about the prediction of users’ thermal comfort at intemal environments. Since 1970, when Fanger accomplished his studies in acdimatized chambers, in Denmark, many other researches on the same subject were being in several countries. The researches of Humphreys and Nicol (1996) were contrary to Fangeris studies, which concluded the non need to uniformize the intemal temperatures of the rooms emphasizing the importance of the acclimatization in relation to the extemal temperaturę. This paper has the main objective to follow a methodology to assess the workers’ thermal sensations in a textile industry, while they carry out their activities at a daily routine. The adopted methodology was according to the proposals of the intemational standards of ISO, related to thermal comfort. Measurement of environmental and personal variables were achieved containing questions about the sensations and thermal preferences, physical characteristics, practical activity, and the clothes wore by the workers. With the obtained data, we tried to determine an equation that best described the workers’ thermal sensations at work. The model of PMV/PPD adopted by the ISO 7730 (1994), represented a significant relationship with the collected thermal sensations, and it was found a coefficient of determination (R²) with the value of 0,59. It was tried, also, a analytical model with multiple regression, where it was discovered the equation for the thermal sensations dependent of the variables: temperaturę of the air, temperaturę of the globo, speed of the air and clothes. The value for the coefficient of determination (R²) was 0,66. This last value was morę appropriate for this kind of case, due to the condition of dependence being damaged, because the clothes used by the workers in the analysed period were not standardized. People use to wear in an appropriate way to adapte themselves to the extemal condition. With the realization of this study, it is expected that the results found may contribute to other studies so that professionals can project intemal environments morę effective in relation to the thermal comfort for their users.

Keywords: Thermal comfort; Thermal sensation; Thermal comfort index