Protective Clothing: Managing Thermal Stress

Protective clothing protects wearers from hostile environments, including extremes of heat and cold. Whilst some types of protective clothing may be designed primarily for non-thermal hazards (e.g. biological hazards), a key challenge in all protective clothing remains wearer comfort and the management of thermal stress (i.e. excessive heat or cold). This book reviews key types of protective clothing, technologies for heating and cooling and, finally, modeling aspects of thermal stress and strain.

Explores different types of protective clothing, their uses and their requirements, with an emphasis on full-scale or prototype clothing, including immersion suits, body armour and space suitsConsiders novel and commercial technologies for regulating temperature in protective clothing, including phase change materials, shape memory alloys, electrically heated clothing and air and water perfusion-based cooling systemsReviews the human thermoregulatory system and the methods of modelling of thermal stress in protective clothing through various conditions, including cold water survival and firefighting

Part I Types of protective clothing and their requirements 1 Cold protective clothing: types, design and standards 2 Cold water immersion suits 3 Clothing for protection against heat and flames 4 Clothing for protection against hot liquid splash and steam hazards 5 Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) protective clothing 6 Ballistic protective clothing and body armour 7 Spacesuits: development and design for thermal comfort 8 Medical protective clothing Part II Technologies for warming or cooling in protective clothing 9 Phase change materials (PCMs) for warming or cooling in protective clothing 10 Shape memory alloys (SMAs) for warming or cooling protective clothing 11 Electrically heated clothing (EHC) for protection against cold stress 12 Air and water perfusion-based personal cooling systems (PCSs) to protect against heat stress in protective clothing Part III Understanding and modelling thermal stress in protective clothing 13 The human thermoregulatory system and its response to thermal stress 14 Modelling of cold stress and cold strain in protective clothing 15 Cold exposure survival and modeling offshore anti-exposure garments 16 Modeling heat stress and heat strain in protective clothing 17 Modeling thermal skin burning in protective clothing