Comfort on automobile seats is lived daily by thousands of drivers. Epistemologically, comfort can be understood under the theory of complexity, since it emerges from a chain of interrelationships between man and several elements of the system. This interaction process can engender extreme comfort associated to the feeling of pleasure and wellbeing or, on the other hand, lead to discomfort, nor...

Despite the obvious importance of thermal comfort in the design of indoor environment, it has not been effectively integrated with design decision support tools. The reasons can be attributed in part to an absence of modular and flexible software architecture that facilitates dynamic data transfer between energy performance, lighting simulation, and thermal comfort modules. Research has shown t...

In rail vehicles, air springs are very important isolating component, which guarantee good ride comfort for passengers during their trip. In the most new rail–vehicle models, developed by researchers, the thermo–dynamical effects of air springs are ignored and secondary suspension is modeled by simple springs and dampers. As the performance of suspension components have significant effects on r...

In-car comfort functions decrease driving stress and therefore increase safety. Drivers typically do not use all available comfort functions optimally, if at all, in every situation they would offer a substantial increase in comfort. Automating such functions as proactive recommender systems would exploit the full potential for decreasing driver stress. Because comfort functions are highly depe...

A personalized thermal comfort prediction method is proposed for use in combination with smart controls for building automation. Occupant thermal comfort is traditionally measured and predicted by the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) metric, which is based on extensive field trials linking reported comfort levels with the various factors. However, PMV is a statistical measure applying to large populat...

Building on findings related to physiological and psychological motivations of food preference, this research develops a framework to examine preferences toward comfort foods. Study 1 used a North American survey of 411 people to determine favored comfort foods, and Study 2 quantified the preferences for these foods across gender and across age groups using a stratified sample of 1005 additiona...

We present a novel, personalised thermal comfort model and a heating agent using this model to reduce energy consumption with minimal comfort loss. At present, heating agents typically use simple models of user comfort when deciding on a set point temperature for the heating or cooling system. These models however generally fail to adapt to an individual user’s preferences, resulting in poor pe...

This paper focused on the comfort afforded by 3 models of hearing protection devices. Devices were selected and, after being tested in a real occupational context, evaluated using a questionnaire regarding different comfort indexes. In this way, it was possible to compare the “performance” of the hearing protectors regarding the comfort indexes, and to determine which one, globally, has afforde...

The present work is focused on the control of indoor thermal comfort in buildings equipped with HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems. The occupants’ thermal comfort sensation is addressed here by the well-known comfort index (PMV Predicted Mean Vote). In this context, different strategies for the control algorithms are proposed by using only-one-actuator system that can be a...

Outdoor spaces are important to sustainable cities because they accommodate pedestrian traffic and outdoor activities, and contribute greatly to urban livability and vitality. In the global context of climate change, outdoor spaces that provide a pleasurable thermal comfort experience for pedestrians effectively improve the quality of urban living. The influence of thermal comfort on outdoor ac...