Impact of personal factors and furniture arrangement on the thermal plume above a human body

Thermal flows generated by office equipment and lighting will be less important in future buildings due to development of low power consumption devices. Consequently, occupants will become one of the major sources of thermal flows in rooms. The influence of type of clothing and chair design on the characteristics of the thermal plume above a person was studied. Experiments were performed in a climate chamber with mean radiant temperature equal to the room air temperature, no radiant temperature asymmetry, and air velocity lower than 0.05 m/s. A female thermal manikin simulated a sitting occupant. The results reveal that the convective heat loss from the body changes inverse proportionally to the clothing thermal insulation and affects the enthalpy excess in the plume. Chair design changes the ratio between convection and radiation heat losses from the body and has significant impact on the thermal plume above a sitting person. The results can be applied in CFD simulations and full-scale mock-up validation of room air distribution.