Science Group
Question:
sachin192
Student
Graduate School
What is effective temperature? What factors govern the optimum effective temperature for the comfort?
My question is related with ergonomics topic "Heat stress"
Answers:
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krishna-agrawala Teacher
Graduate SchooleNotes Editor
Posted by krishna-agrawala on Sunday November 8, 2009 at 5:47 AMBest answer as selected by question asker.
Temperature of the working environment is very important for worker effectiveness, health and comfort. The human body needs to maintain itself at an ideal body temperature of 37 degrees centigrade. Body does this by regulating the heat it it generates internally and the heat it exchanges with environment. When the body id doing work it generates extra heat which must be dissipated to the environment. Such dissipation of heat is hampered by higher environmental temperature. On the other hand too in very low temperature the body looses more heat to the environment than its capacity to produce heat necessary to keep body at normal temperature. Thus it is essential to avoid either too hot or too cold environment, or when these cannot be avoided, suitable arrangement must be made to protect operators from their harmful effect.
The ability of body to maintain its temperature depends, in addition to environmental temperature, other factors such as ventilation, humidity, radiant heat and body metabolism. During period of activity the body generates more heat either ad to heat available to keep the body warm in cold environment, or the heat that needs to be dissipated in hot environment. The kind of clothing worn by operators also affects the level of comfort at different environmental temperatures. Clothes with higher insulation properties enable operators to remain warm in relatively colder environment. Also permeability of clothes affect in evaporation of perspiration and thereby the ability of body to keep cool in hot environments. Clothes that do not allow perspiration to evaporate make the operator uncomfortable in hot environment. At they same time they also reduce the ability of body to keep warm in cold environment by making clothing wet and thereby reducing their insulation effect.
