Study on Cool Chair equipped with warming function

Recent air-conditioning systems aim to provide thermal comfort for an unspecified number of residents. However, office workers may perceive the feeling of comfort differently depending on their clothing, metabolic rate, and personal activity level. This may cause difficulties in maintaining an optimal thermal environment. To address this problem, personal air-conditioning has attracted attention, which is highly versatile and can reduce thermal discomfort and provide comfort to all office workers by enabling individual thermal control. Therefore, the authors focused on developing an office chair, the “Cool Chair”, as a chair-type personal air-conditioning system with a cooling function from 2003 to 2016. The authors then added a warming function for year-round operation, creating the “Cool Chair with Warming Function” in 2017. Subjective evaluation results are reported. These experiments using the new chair indicated that the warming function achieves steady state in 30 minutes and the equivalent temperature of the entire body increases by +2°C. In subject experiments, the warming and cooling functions were adjusted according to individual preferences, and the cooling function was used even during winter by some individuals. The authors also confirmed that the feeling of comfort by the subjects improved at both 19°C and 22°C.