• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.215-220
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• 2005

Thermal neutrality is not enough to achieve thermal comfort. The temperature level can be the optimal, and still people may complain. This situation is often explained by the problem of local discomfort. Local discomfort can be caused by radiant asymmetry, local air velocities, too warm and too cold floor temperature and vertical temperature difference. This temperature difference may generate thermal discomfort due to different thermal sensation in different body parts. Therefore, thermal comfort can not be correctly evaluated without considering these differences. This study investigates thermal discomfort sensations of different body parts and its effect on overall thermal sensation and comfort in air-heating room. Experimental results of evaluating thermal discomfort at different body parts in an air-heating room showed that thermal sensation on the shoulder was significantly related to the overall thermal sensation and discomfort. Although it is known that cool-head, warm-foot condition is good for comfort living, cool temperature around the head generated discomfort.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.426-432
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• 2022

HVAC systems play a critical role in reducing energy consumption in buildings. Integrating occupants' thermal comfort evaluation into HVAC control strategies is believed to reduce building energy consumption while minimizing their thermal discomfort. Advanced technologies, such as visual sensors and deep learning, enable the recognition of occupants' discomfort-related actions, thus making it possible to estimate their thermal discomfort. Unfortunately, it remains unclear how accurate a deep learning-based classifier is to recognize occupants' discomfort-related actions in a working environment. Therefore, this research evaluates the classification performance of occupants' discomfort-related actions while sitting at a computer desk. To achieve this objective, this study collected RGB video data on nine college students' cold discomfort-related actions and then trained a deep learning-based classifier using the collected data. The classification results are threefold. First, the trained classifier has an average accuracy of 93.9% for classifying six cold discomfort-related actions. Second, each discomfort-related action is recognized with more than 85% accuracy. Third, classification errors are mostly observed among similar discomfort-related actions. These results indicate that using human action data will enable facility managers to estimate occupants' thermal discomfort and, in turn, adjust the operational settings of HVAC systems to improve the energy efficiency of buildings in conjunction with their thermal comfort levels.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.444-449
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• 2001

The purpose of the work is to improve comfort of a car seat, especially dynamic comfort which affects driver's discomfort during the long time driving. Definition of dynamic comfort was made before the investigation of which parameter affects seat comfort. In order to optimize design parameters so as to maximize seat comfort as well as to know the cause of discomfort, benchmarking on a target vehicle and competitive vehicles was performed, which showed both the vibration transmission characteristics and the compression set due to dynamic loading should be reduced. As a solution ball rebounds was increased by about 10％ of the original foam, which showed reduction of S.E.A.T. value by 10％ and of compression set by 60％.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.81-93
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• 2002

This study aims to provide joint angles of comfort for females, based on the psychophysical scaling method. Ten female subjects participated in the experiment for measuring perceived discomfort for varying joint motions. The subjects were instructed to maintain given joint motions for a minute, and to rate their perceived discomfort for the motions during a minute's rest by using the free modulus method of the magnitude estimation. Joint angles of comfort were calculated from the regression equations based on the experimental results, in which levels of joint motions were used as independent variables and perceived discomforts as dependent variables. The results showed that joint angles of comfort for the joint motions investigated were much smaller than full range of motions for corresponding joint motions. The ratios of joint angle of comfort to its range motion for the hip were found to be smallest of all joint motions dealt with in this study, and those for the neck were the largest. In addition, comfortable joint angles for females were much smaller than those for males. It is recommended that when designing or evaluating workplaces ergonomically, different comfortable joint angles should be applied according to workers' or population's gender.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 1995.04a
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• pp.124-133
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• 1995

A field study was conducted to assess the preferred height and the range of discomfort recognition of school desks and chairs for students from elementary school to high school. For this study 43 male subjects and 44 female subjects in Taejon area were surveyed. The result shows that the preferred height of chairs is about 1.7cm higher than the popliteal sitting height, while the preferred height of desks shows no significant difference with the elbow sitting height which is known to be the ergonomically proper desk height. The threshold value between comfort and discomfort recognition of chair height is 1.88cm below the most prefeered height and 1.79cm about it. The threshold value between comfort and discomfort recognition of desk height is 1.76cm below the most prefeered height and 2.62cm about it.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.41-50
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• 1995

A field study was conducted to assess the preferred height and the range of discomfort recognition of school desks and chairs for students from elementary school to high school. For this study 43 male subjects and 44 female subjects in Taejon metropolitan area were surveyed. The result showed that the preferred height of chairs were found to be about 1.7cm higher than the popliteal sitting height, while the preferred height of desks showed no significant difference with the elbow sitting height which is known to be the ergonomically proper desk height. The threshold value between comfort and discomfort recognition of chair heigth was 1.88cm below the most preferred height and 1.79cm above it. The threshold value between comfort and discomfort recognition of desk height was 1.76cm below the most preferred height and 2.62cm above it.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.381-388
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• 1998

Hot and humid weather in summer generally brings about discomfort. Experiments on which relative humidity makes effects on the comfort sensation were performed to the young and the aged using sensation vote. From July to October 1996, seven college students and eleven aged people were exposed for 2 hours under six different conditions in the Pukyong National University test chamber so as to determine the effects of relative humidity on thermal and comfort sensations. Subjects were wearing same clothes, and the mean clo value was 0.5. The mean radiant temperature was equal to the air temperature and air velocity in the occupied zone around 0.lm/s. In the experiments, it was found that discomfort could be largely reduced when the humidity is controlled to low values in the settled high temperature.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.73-82
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• 1997

Daily exposure to constrained body postures and deviations from neutral postures over a long period may result in discomfort as well as pains and aches in the muscles, joints, tendons, and other soft tissues. Furthermore, it was known that poor body postures are a major cause of musculoskeletal disorders in industry. Therefore, in this study, comfort ranges of joint motions were obtained as a criterion for evaluating body postures and designing workplaces ergonomically, which were bases on subjects' perceived discomfort level estimated by magnitude estimation. Nineteen healthy male subjects participated in the laboratory study. They results showed that comfort ranges of joint motions occurred in the wrist, elbow, neck, and ankle were little less than their normal range of joint motions, but those in the back(L5/S1) and hip joint were much less than their normal ones. This fact implies that the back and jip movements are more stressful than the other joints movements. It is expected that comfort ranges of joint motions can be used as a valuable guideline when designing and evaluating workplaces.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.25-30
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• 2010

The daylited space can improve visual comfort and occupant's well-being. However discomfort glare from the daylight is a common problem in indoor environments and in general, the window is the main glare sources. Some formulas have been proposed for predicting glare from the daylight, however, they do not consider the effect on glare of the view through a window and some studies proved that they are inadequate in real daylight situation. This research aims to identify the relationship between view and discomfort glare considering the subjective impressions. As a preliminary experiment, this paper sets up the experimental protocol to reveal relationships between views from a window and visual perception in a controlled laboratory experiment. $1.2m{\times}1.2m$ artificial window was developed and $0.9m{\times}0.9m$ view image was placed on the window. Discomfort glare and impression evaluation was carried out under four different views and one blank view as a reference condition. The results showed that the subjects evaluated discomfort glare differently with the views even under the same luminance conditions and tended to feel less glare with distance views compared to near views.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.1260-1264
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• 2006

Shock-type vibrations are usually experienced in vehicles excited by impulsive forces. Fifteen subjects used magnitude estimation to judge the discomfort of vertical shock-type vibration generated on a rigid seat. The shocks had different frequencies and magnitudes and were produced from the response of a 1 degree-of-freedom model to a half-sine force input. The magnitudes of the shocks, expressed in terms of both peak-to-peak value and un-weighted vibration dose values, VDVs, were correlated with magnitude estimates of the discomfort. In this study, equivalent comfort contour of shock-type vibration were obtained. From the contour, it was investigated that shock-type vibration at frequency below 0.8 Hz and between 4.0 Hz and 10.0 Hz is highly sensitive to the discomfort than at other frequencies.