In this investigation, the thermal comfort of clothing was subjectively evaluated in cold
environmental conditions. Different male business clothing systems, made of standard textiles
(wool and wool-mixture), and materials that contain phase-change materials (PCMs), were
developed. The research was performed with the help of test subjects in a computer controlled
climatic chamber, in artificially created cold environmental conditions, at ambient
temperatures of 10 °C, 5 °C and 0 °C, and with physical activity that is as reminiscent as
possible of the real life situation of wearing clothes, such as sitting and walking on a
treadmill. The impact of particular business clothing systems and varied cold environmental
conditions on the wearer’s subjective feeling of thermal comfort was determined with a
questionnaire and an assessment scale of thermal comfort defined by standard ISO
10551:1995. For this purpose, an analysis of the subjective evaluation of thermal comfort, the
desired thermal state, the acceptability of the current situation and their personal tolerance of
the environment, was made before, during and after each experiment. The results of the
research show that subjective evaluations of thermal comfort directly depend on
environmental conditions, as well as clothing systems. From this subjective evaluation it can
be seen that in spite of lower mean skin temperatures the test subjects felt comfortable at an
ambient temperature of 10 °C. It is also evident that the analysed clothing systems are not
suitable for wearing below an ambient temperature of 0 °C, because the test subjects felt
uncomfortable.
