Convective heat transfer coefficients for human body segments to different ventilation systems: A sensitivity analysis: Presentation held at CLIMA 2013, 11th REHVA World Congress & 8th International Conference on IAQVEC, June 16-19, 2013, Prague Congress Centre

The thermal equilibrium of the human body is a combination of several thermophysical and thermoregulatory processes. This comprises models for heat transfer between virtual human and its environment, a thermoregulation model, and models for thermal sensation and comfort perception. In the overall context of an integrated multi-physics approach, here the heat transfer through convection between human body and its environment is addressed. Detailed models for convection are needed in order to obtain a physically correct description of the total heat exchange. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach is used for modeling fluid flow and for predicting local heat transfer between manikin surface elements and the environment. This work uses a thermal manikin model with 48 body segments developed from an ergonomic model which can additionally allow transforming body parts while maintaining the segmentation of the thermoregulation model by geometrical constraints. The main aim of this work is to conduct the sensitivity analysis by investigating the parameters and evaluating the impact on the convective heat transfer for each body segment. Numerical simulations have been conducted for calculating convective heat transfer coefficients of a parametric human manikin model in a space with different ventilation systems and compared with previous studies. Furthermore, the influence of human body postures with respect to convective heat transfer is addressed. Final goal is the development of a parametric database of convective heat transfer coefficients on human manikins in multiple indoor situations