Collaborative Research: FW-HTF-P: Personalized Wearable Cooling for Workers under Heat Stress

大约有3000万美国工人从事人体经常暴露于严重热应激的职业。热应激可由极端的环境条件和高水平的代谢活动引起，通常涉及这些暴露的职业。热应激会严重损害认知功能，降低身体表现和耐力，并增加受伤、疾病和死亡的风险。尽管预计人类工人将继续在这些暴露的职业中发挥主要作用，但减轻他们热应激的技术并没有受到太多关注。为了解决这个问题，研究人员探索了新型可穿戴冷却设备的发展，并将获得初步数据，这将有助于评估和提高设备的功效、可接受性和可用性。研究小组将与其他利益相关者合作，研究冷却装置的社会经济影响，以及政策和其他干预措施的潜在需求，以促进其广泛和公平的采用。提出的工作有助于验证过去在体温调节生理学领域的发现：身体的热量并不是从所有身体表面均匀地损失到环境中。更好地了解热损失的区域差异对可穿戴技术的应用具有重要意义，可穿戴技术可用于以一种既可行、有效又易于获取的方式预防或治疗热应激。最终目标是开发一种颠覆性的可穿戴冷却技术，这种技术易于扩展。提出的工作也将有助于推进对柔性冷却装置中的材料、热力学和传热的基本理解。扩大本科生和研究生的参与，特别是来自经济弱势群体和代表性不足群体的参与，是拟议努力的一个组成部分。该研究项目应作为一个有吸引力的平台，鼓励和激励K-12学生继续接受科学和工程方面的教育，因为它在直接影响人类生活的应用中具有重要意义，特别是那些从事暴露职业及其家庭的人。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Approximately 30 million U.S. workers are employed in occupations where the human body is regularly exposed to severe heat stress. Heat stress can result from extreme environmental conditions and from high levels of metabolic activity often involved in these exposed occupations. Heat stress can substantially impair cognitive function, degrade physical performance and endurance, and elevate the risk of injury, illness and death. Although human workers are expected to continue to play major roles in these exposed occupations, technologies to mitigate their heat stress have not received much attention. To address this, the investigators explore the development of novel wearable cooling devices and will obtain preliminary data that will help assess and improve the efficacy, acceptability, and usability of the devices. The research team will engage other stakeholders to examine the socioeconomic impacts of the cooling devices and the potential needs for policy and other interventions to facilitate their widespread and equitable adoption.The proposed work helps validate past discoveries in the field of thermoregulatory physiology: body heat is not lost to the environment equally from all body surfaces. A better understanding of regional differences in heat loss has implications for wearable technologies that can be used to prevent or treat heat stress in a way that is both feasible, effective, and accessible. The ultimate aim is to develop a disruptive technology for wearable cooling that is readily scalable. The proposed work will also help advance fundamental understanding of the materials, thermodynamics, and heat transfer in a flexible cooling device. Programs to broaden participation of undergraduate and graduate students, especially from economically disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, are an integral part of the proposed efforts. The research project should serve as an attractive platform to encourage and excite K-12 students to pursue further education in science and engineering, given its significance in applications that can directly impact human lives, especially those employed in exposed occupations and their families.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.