Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Heat Stress Evaluation Of Protective Clothing Ensembles, Amanda Lee Pease

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clothing directly affects the level of heat stress exposure. Useful measures to express the thermal characteristics are WBGT (wet bulb globe temperature) clothing adjustment factor (CAF) or apparent total evaporative resistance (R_e,T,_a). The CAF is assigned through laboratory wear trials following a heat stress protocol in which the air temperature and humidity are progressively increased until the participant clearly loses the ability to maintain thermal equilibrium. The critical condition is the point of thermal transition and from these conditions both the CAF and Re,T,a are computed. The first objective of this study is to compare the …