Abstract:Purpose
– The aim of this study is to investigate wearing comfort of summer work uniforms judged by construction workers.
Design/methodology/approach
– A total of 189 male construction workers participated in a series of wear trials and questionnaire surveys in the summer of 2014. They were asked to randomly wear two types of work uniforms (i.e. uniforms A and B) in the two-day field survey and the subjective attributes of these uniforms… Show more
“…Chan and his colleagues administered a series of field surveys to evaluate the acceptability and practicality of wearing personal cooling vests at construction sites 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ) . A new work uniform designed for construction workers have been proved to be effective in easing heat strain and improving wearing comfort through a series of laboratory and field experiments and questionnaire surveys 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ) . Despite these, the major challenges of these studies lied in that only limited garments were scrutinized.…”
Developing heat stress interventions for construction workers has received mounting concerns in recent years. However, limited efforts have been exerted to elaborate the rationale, methodology, and practicality of heat stress intervention in the construction industry. This study aims to review previous heat stress intervention research in construction, to identify the major research gaps in methodological issues, and to offer detailed recommendations for future studies. A total of 35 peer-reviewed journal papers have been identified to develop administrative, environmental or personal engineering interventions to safeguard construction workers. It was found that methodological limitations, such as arbitrary sampling methods and unreliable instruments, could be the major obstacle in undertaking heat stress intervention research. To bridge the identified research gaps, this study then refined a research framework for conducting heat stress intervention studies in the construction industry. The proposed research strategy provides researchers and practitioners with fresh insights into expanding multidisciplinary research areas and solving practical problems in the management of heat stress. The proposed research framework may foster the development of heat stress intervention research in construction, which further aids researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in formulating proper intervention strategies.
“…Chan and his colleagues administered a series of field surveys to evaluate the acceptability and practicality of wearing personal cooling vests at construction sites 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ) . A new work uniform designed for construction workers have been proved to be effective in easing heat strain and improving wearing comfort through a series of laboratory and field experiments and questionnaire surveys 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 ) . Despite these, the major challenges of these studies lied in that only limited garments were scrutinized.…”
Developing heat stress interventions for construction workers has received mounting concerns in recent years. However, limited efforts have been exerted to elaborate the rationale, methodology, and practicality of heat stress intervention in the construction industry. This study aims to review previous heat stress intervention research in construction, to identify the major research gaps in methodological issues, and to offer detailed recommendations for future studies. A total of 35 peer-reviewed journal papers have been identified to develop administrative, environmental or personal engineering interventions to safeguard construction workers. It was found that methodological limitations, such as arbitrary sampling methods and unreliable instruments, could be the major obstacle in undertaking heat stress intervention research. To bridge the identified research gaps, this study then refined a research framework for conducting heat stress intervention studies in the construction industry. The proposed research strategy provides researchers and practitioners with fresh insights into expanding multidisciplinary research areas and solving practical problems in the management of heat stress. The proposed research framework may foster the development of heat stress intervention research in construction, which further aids researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in formulating proper intervention strategies.
“…The effectiveness of this intervention uniform on alleviating thermo-physiological and perceptual strain has been demonstrated in the laboratory experiment 21 ) . The earlier questionnaire surveys involving over 180 construction workers indicate that most of workers preferred to wear this uniform to keep them cool, dry, and comfortable without impeding work performance while performing daily work in summer 22 ) . Fig.…”
This study aims to examine the benefits of wearing a new construction work uniform in real-work settings. A field experiment with a randomized assignment of an intervention group to a newly designed uniform and a control group to a commercially available trade uniform was executed. A total of 568 sets of physical, physiological, perceptual, and microclimatological data were obtained. A linear mixed-effects model (LMM) was built to examine the cause-effect relationship between the Perceptual Strain Index (PeSI) and heat stressors including wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), estimated workload (relative heart rate), exposure time, trade, workplace, and clothing type. An interaction effect between clothing and trade revealed that perceptual strain of workers across four trades was significantly alleviated by 1.6–6.3 units in the intervention group. Additionally, the results of a questionnaire survey on assessing the subjective sensations on the two uniforms indicated that wearing comfort was improved by 1.6–1.8 units when wearing the intervention type. This study not only provides convincing evidences on the benefits of wearing the newly designed work uniform in reducing perceptual strain but also heightens the value of the field experiment in heat stress intervention studies.
“…The emergence of artificial intelligence, data learning and mining technologies provides new approaches to solve the issues of garment fit evaluation. These technologies have been widely applied in the field of clothing and textile over last decade [27], such as, sensory evaluation of textile and related products [18,28], garment fit and comfort prediction [1,29], optimization of woven fabric parameters [30], size system [31,32], intelligent systems of fashion design [33], garment production management [34]; apparel retail [35], clothing image recognition , and supply chain management [36]. Compared to classical methods, intelligent approaches are usually more capable of 1) solving nonlinear problems; 2) processing both numerical and linguistic attributes; 3) modeling human expert reasoning so as to produce correct and straightforward interpretation of results; and 4) computing with data of small quantity and without need of any preliminary or additional information like probabilistic distributions in statistics.…”
Currently, garment fit evaluation is one of the biggest bottlenecks for fashion design and manufacturing. In this paper, we proposed a garment fit prediction model using data learning technology, such as Back Propagation Artificial Neural Networks (BP-ANNs), Random Forest, Bayesian Classifier. The inputs of the proposed model are digital clothing pressures measured by virtual try-on; while the output of the model is one of the three fit conditions- tight, fit or loose. In order to acquire reliable learning data, virtual and real try-on experiments were carried out to collect input and output learning data respectively. After learning from the collected input and output experimental data, the proposed model can predict garment fit rapidly and automatically by inputting digital clothing pressures measured by virtual try-on. Test results showed that the prediction accuracies of data-learning-based garment fit evaluation methods are much better than that of traditional methods.
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