Simulation of psychological responses in car cabin with alternation of the wind direction of the air conditioning

In this study, the methods of predicting thermal comfort in car cabin with alternation of the wind direction of the air conditioning were suggested. The wind direction of air-conditioning was set to following two conditions, Case 1: Face, Case 2: Chest. The purpose of this study is to improve prediction of physiological response and to predict psychological response under non-uniform and transient conditions. The experiment using subjects in car cabin was done in the laboratory. Moreover, the simulation was done by computational fluid dynamics (CFD), numerical thermoregulation model (JOS) (Murakami, 2007) and prediction model of psychological amount (Zhang model) (Zhang, 2003, 2009). In this study, the simulation of physiological response was done with CFD combined with JOS (Tanabe and Sano, 2008). Then, the psychological response was predicted by using the result of the simulation. As a result, the psychological response predicted by CFD, JOS, and Zhang model was considered validity. Therefore, the method is considered to adapt to non-uniform thermal environment.