Design and performance of an air inflatable suit in enhancing personal thermal management

Maintaining human thermal comfort in cold indoor environments is crucial but usually involves excessive energy consumption and massive greenhouse gas emissions. Thermoregulating the human body by using advanced clothing is emerging as a promising solution to effectively and energy-efficiently achieve personal thermal management. An air inflatable suit (AirST) using a series of air chambers as the thermal insert was developed for the purpose of adjusting clothing thermal insulation and hence improving personal thermal comfort. The thermal insulation regulating performance of AirST was investigated through thermal manikin tests and wear trials. Compared with the AirST without air inflation, AirST after inflation with air had a desired effect, which could not only increase local clothing thermal insulation by a range from 4.5% to 24.8% but also alleviate cold strain and provide significantly higher local skin temperatures, mean skin temperature and mean body temperature. After inflation, AirST successfully improved the whole-, upper- and lower-body thermal sensations in a cool environment. The acceptable heating setpoint temperature by the air conditioner could be decreased while using AirST with inflation, which saved approximately 30% of building energy consumption. As the AirST without air inflation can also be worn as regular windproof clothing, this versatility saved approximately 12 kg CO 2 e emissions in the production process.