Analysis of Different Shape Ventilation Elements for Protective Clothing

Abstract

People's thermoregulation may be hampered by exposure to extreme temperatures. Because of this, it is crucial to consider how fabric cooling and ventilation may affect human comfort while designing clothing. There is a demand on the market for more effective technical solutions and materials to be used in the external part of protective gear, while also ensuring the necessary ventilation even in warm environmental conditions and during heavy physical load. This is due to the growing interest in the market for efficient protection of the human body against exposure to extreme weather conditions. In this article a simple elliptical model of the body and the jacket is used to reduce the complexity of the problem. Five different shapes of ventilation elements named as E1 to E5 are designed for the study and the numerical results for the pressure, temperature and heat flux are calculated using SolidWorks Flow Simulation at three different inlet air velocity of 2, 5 and 8 m/s. The acquired results display interesting flow patterns and how the ventilation elements' shapes might influence the flow at various wind velocities. The results are compared and analyzed in terms of heat flux, pressure difference and temperature difference. The main objective is to determine which element's geometrical shape gives the smallest flow energy losses in the cell flow channel. If the pressure difference is higher, flow energy losses will also be high, and if the flow energy losses are higher, the body cooling decreases. The obtained results show that pressure difference increases gradually with the increasing inlet velocity. Moreover, results also indicates how different shapes of ventilation elements can affect the flow, pressure difference and flow energy losses. Based on analysis of obtained simulation results the most perspective ventilation element is proposed.