Thermal comfort assessment in the modern passenger car under actual operational conditions

Abstract

People’s ever-increasing needs encourage designers of various vehicles to search for solutions that will provide the most comfortable internal environment conditions. Currently, partly due to the COVID-19 threat, many people use their individual cars to travel to work, college, shops, trips, and holidays. Proper internal air parameters that need to be maintained in vehicles are critical in the summer. The article discusses the thermal comfort of four passengers of a modern car produced in 2017 to verify if contemporary production technology can successfully meet the thermal needs of people under actual conditions in the Polish climate. For this purpose, five temperature values were tested: 20°C, 22°C, 24°C, 26°C, and 28°C for the car located in the shade and sun. In addition, the Testo 400 meter was used to control and measure the internal parameters, and questionnaires were used to find out about the thermal impressions of the respondents. The research was carried out in July when the air temperature in Poland was high.