Heating Effect on the Upper Body for Developing Exothermic Smartwear

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This study examines the skin temperature and blood flow rate changes upon heating or cooling the body trunk and extremities in a low temperature environment, and investigated their relevance to thermal comfort. To accomplish this, the heating areas were set to trunk (back), extremities (arms), and total (back and arms). The blood flow rate, skin temperature, microclimate temperature of the heating area, and subjective thermal comfort data were measured in the rest state, 15 minutes after attaching a heating pad, and 15 minutes after removing a heating pad. In this result, heating back and arms increased blood flow rate by 13.7% and eventually increased to 21.1% after removing the heating pad. Also, removing the heating pad after attaching it, increased the chest skin temperature to 32°C from 31.9°C. The subjective thermal sensation stayed constant at the 0.4 score when heating the back and arms or when heating only the back, which was the same as at rest. Thus, heating the trunk (back) and extremities (arms) in a low temperature environment is effective in raising the blow flow rate, skin temperature, and subjective thermal sensation. Also, the high blood flow rate of the tip of the hand can be maintained after removing the heating pad, so inserting heating pads in the trunk and extremities is preferable, which should be considered in further smartwear studies.