Walter Sweating Fabric Manikin

Walter Sweating Fabric Manikin are essential tools for the comfort evaluation of the thermal environment and clothing as well as research into the dynamics of heat and moisture transfer from the human body to the environment – a foundation for thermal physiology and environmental engineering.

Walter Sweating Fabric Manikin technical advantages:

The simulation of sweating in the existing manikins is limited by the practically manageable number of water supplying tubes and holes, which are far less than the approximately six million sweating glands on human. Besides, they are not very accurate because of the difficulty in maintaining consistent sweating and in accurately determining the humidity at the skin surface. They also have very different thermal properties from that of a human body.

The new invention-Walter is inspired by the thermoregulation system of human body. With the original use of a breathable fabric to simulate the skin and a water circulation system to simulate the blood circulation, the novel manikin achieved perspiration over the entire body and very high measurement accuracy (viz. a CV of less 5%), yet with a cost of only a small fraction of other sweating manikins developed so far.

The price advantage of Walter Sweating Fabric Manikin：

Since the development of the first non-sweating, single segment copper thermal manikin by the US Army in 1940s, there have been numerous developments worldwide in thermal manikin technologies. Nevertheless, the simulation of perspiration has continued to be one of the major challenges. Inspired by the thermoregulation system of the human body, a novel sweating fabric manikin nicknamed “Walter” has been developed in Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The new sweating manikin achieved perspiration over the entire body and a very high measurement accuracy (viz. a CV of less 5%), yet with a cost of only a small fraction of other sweating manikins developed so far.

Keywords: sweating, perspiration, manikin, thermal comfort, clothing, environmental ergonomics.