The Suitability of Porous Material to Simulate Evaporation in Human Sweating Mechanisms

This study aims to determine the suitable porous material that can simulate human sweat evaporation rate for preliminary thermal comfort assessment. The objective of the study was to identify the relationship of human sweat evaporation rate with porous material evaporation rate. Field experimental has been conducted to measure the evaporation rate of porous material such as red clay, white clay, plaster and human sweat. Then, the correlation analysis was conducted between porous material evaporation rate and human sweat evaporation rate. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS 20 and Microsoft Excel 2016 tools. Pearson correlation were used as statistical analysis to find the relationship between both variable. The statistical significance level was set at P< 0.01. Based on the findings, human sweat evaporation rate had a moderate correlation with red clay (r = 0.583) and white clay (r = 0.503) with statistically significant but very weak correlation with plaster (r = 0.020). The porous characteristics of red clay and white clay has the capillary effect which is almost like human skin by showing a good correlation between human sweat and porous material evaporation rate. As this is preliminary study, in future more research to be done to obtain higher correlation between porous material and the human body by modifying the material. To minimize heat stress, it would be a step forward in evaluating outdoor thermal comfort and raising awareness of society and government.