Design and testing of a liquid cooled garment for hot environments

Liquid cooled garments (LCGs) are considered a viable method to protect individuals from hyperthermia and heat-related illness when working in thermally stressful environments. While the concept of LCGs was proposed over 50 years ago, the design and testing of these systems is undeveloped and stands in need of further study. In this study, a detailed heat transfer model of LCG in a hot environment was built to analyze the effects of different factors on the LCG performance, and to identify the main limitations to achieve maximum performance. An LCG prototype was designed and fabricated. Series of tests were done by a modified thermal manikin method to validate the heat transfer model and to evaluate the thermal properties. Both experimental and predicted results show that the heat flux components match the heat balance equation with an error of less than 10% at different flowrate. Thermal resistance analysis also manifests that the thermal resistance between the cooling water and the ambient (R2) is more sensitive to the flowrate than to the one between the skin surface and the cooling water (R1). When the flowrate increased from 225 to 544 mL/min, R2 decreased from 0.5 to 0.3 °C m(2)/W while R1 almost remained constant. A specific duration time was proposed to assess the durability and an optimized value of 1.68 h/kg was found according to the heat transfer model. The present heat transfer model and specific duration time concept could be used to optimize and evaluate this kind of LCG respectively.