Assessment of thermal comfort conditions during physical exercise by means of exergy analysis

Some authors have been applying the exergy analysis to thermal comfort, where the environmental conditions for minimal exergy destruction are claimed to correspond to thermal comfort conditions. Herein, the exergy destroyed rate of the human body will be determined as a function of temperature and humidity for three levels of exercise. For the sake of comparison, thermal comfort will also be assessed by means of PMV (Predicted Mean Vote) index. Results indicate that, the higher the relative humidity, the lower the temperature of thermal comfort and, for the same humidity, the higher the exercise intensity, the smaller the temperature of thermal comfort. On the other hand, the values of PMV do not vary much with relative humidity, what indicates that the effect of this parameter is almost neglected by this method. Besides, the difference between the three levels of exercise was not as pronounced as in the exergy method. During activity, the values of the exergy flow rate due to evaporation for thermal comfort are smaller in the exergy method than in the conventional one. Thus, it can be said that, under physical activities, the exergy method for thermal comfort seems to be a reliable alternative to the conventional one.