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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Indoor Environment
Volume 10 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2024.1506681

Investigation of thermal comfort under face masks wearing conditions in the smart building

Provisionally accepted
Lukasz Jan Orman Lukasz Jan Orman 1*Luiza Dębska Luiza Dębska 1Stanislav Honus Stanislav Honus 2Norbert Radek Norbert Radek 1Stanisław Adamczak Stanisław Adamczak 1Natalia Siwczuk Natalia Siwczuk 1
  • 1 Kielce University of Technology, Kielce, Poland
  • 2 VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Moravian-Silesian Region, Czechia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The paper analyses thermal comfort of people wearing face masks. The study took place in the selected classrooms of the smart building "Energis" located in Poland. In the experiments 100 respondents participated. They filled in the questionnaire forms, in which they expressed their subjective assessment of the indoor thermal environment. Simultaneously, measurements of the physical parameters within the rooms were performed with a microclimate meter. The results clearly show that the use of face masks influenced thermal sensations of the people -they felt warmer than without the face mask on (at the same air temperature). Moreover, the respondents who wore the masks indicated that the air was more humid in relation to the case when the masks are not applied. The comparison of the obtained actual thermal sensations of the respondents with the calculation results according to the thermal comfort model proved that the model was unable to properly predict thermal sensations of people wearing face masks.

    Keywords: heat transfer, Smart Building, Thermal comfort, thermal environment, Thermal sensations

    Received: 21 Oct 2024; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Orman, Dębska, Honus, Radek, Adamczak and Siwczuk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lukasz Jan Orman, Kielce University of Technology, Kielce, Poland

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