Exploring the Contact Comfort within Complex Well-Being in Microenvironment

Abstract:

The paper deals with the problematic of contact comfort as a part of body conscious design/ human-centred design. Contact comfort consist of a combination of balanced surface temperature, heat transmission, surface roughness, surface elasticity/hardness, sorption activity of the surface in terms of vapour/fluids absorbance, sorption activity of the surface in terms of absorbing the external moisture (e.g. sweat or humidity of air/its condensates), having control over body position, possibilities of maintenance and visual comfort connected with cultural background of users, individual mental and physical setting that is creating overall feeling of comfort. All these parameters are measurable and it is possible to optimize them with an aim to get good solutions that are providing higher contact comfort.Roughness is extremely important for overall feeling of contact comfort it has direct relation also to the other features. The current paper presents also the methodology and results of the pilot study of contact comfort. .Different wood based materials and wood species with different types of surface finishing in comparison with other materials were investigated by using a test chair.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volume 899)
• Pages: 356-362
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.899.356
• Online since: February 2014
• Authors: Veronika Kotradyová*, Alfred Teischinger
• Keywords: Comfort, Design, Human, Roughness, Surface, Tactile, Temperature

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