Research on Skin Temperature and Thermal Comfort of Electric Vehicle Passengers Under Contact Cooling System

Abstract

A proximity cooling system, which reduces power consumption and improves the thermal comfort of occupants can alleviate the mileage reduction of electric vehicles (xEVs) during air conditioning, which signifies emerging problem nowadays. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of contact cooling on passengers by conducting a chamber experiment on 36 participants. All the subjects experienced three conditions depending on the device used. The physiological and psychological cooling effects were examined using skin temperature and subjective evaluation. During contact cooling, it was found that the cooling effect of the seat and headrest varies depending on time and body parts. Overall, this work proved the efficiency of using a cooling seat and headrest for the first 15 min and headrest cooling for the next 15 min. As there was no increase in thermal comfort after that, it would be efficient to stop using contact cooling to save energy.