Exergy Analysis and Human Body Thermal Comfort Conditions: Evaluation of Different Body Compositions

This article focuses on studying the effects of muscle and fat percentages on the exergy behavior of the human body under several environmental conditions. The main objective is to relate the thermal comfort indicators with exergy rates, resulting in a Second Law perspective to evaluate thermal environment. A phenomenological model is proposed of the human body with four layers: core, muscle, fat and skin. The choice of a simplified model is justified by the facility to variate the amount of mass in each tissue without knowing how it spreads around the body. After validated, the model was subjected to a set of environmental conditions and body compositions. The results obtained indicate that the area normalization (Watts per square meter) may be used as a safe generalization for the exergy transfer to environment. Moreover, the destroyed exergy itself is sufficient to evaluate the thermal sensation when the model is submitted to environmental temperatures lower than that considered for the thermal neutrality condition (and, in this text, the thermal comfort). Nevertheless, for environments with temperatures higher than the calculated for the thermal neutrality, the combination of destroyed exergy and the rate of exergy transferred to the environment should be used to properly evaluate thermal comfort.