Investigation and analysis of the ‘cold’ sensation relation with respect to associated parameters: wind velocity, ambient temperature, humidity, and irradiance

Abstract

The Arctic is considered as one of the regions in the world with various resources including oil and gas. Many industries are moving further up north to this area or new industries are being established. Technologies and industries in the Arctic have many challenges regarding the harsh cold climate. One of the main challenges which is of importance in this thesis is human exposure to the cold that affects operation conditions and can increase HSE risks. WINDTECH team has devised a tool for measuring the sensation of the ‘cold’. The ‘cold’ is measured with an electrical heater. The heater is exposed to the different weather conditions with a fixed power and it will be stabilized within a short period of time which it referred to as ‘heated temperature’. The higher values of ‘heated temperature’ indicate lower heat loss and less values mean higher heat loss. Therefore, to manage the risks for human exposure to cold it is important to measure all the parameters that affect the ‘heated temperature’, including ambient temperature, humidity, wind velocity, and irradiance. WINDTECH team device is equipped with sensors that measure ambient temperature, humidity, irradiance, pressure and ‘heated temperature’. It is challenging to measure wind velocities however, analysis have showed wind velocity can be estimated with decent accuracy using pressure values. In this thesis the WINDTECH device is implemented to perform the experiments both in the lab and in the field in various conditions to collect data, all the parameters have been measured with the device and analyzed separately to investigate their effects on the ‘heated temperature’ and their cumulative effect, to give an estimation of ‘heated temperature’ values which indicates the heat loss amount. The analysis can be implemented to decrease the risks involved with operation conditions. Since the WINDTECH device is under patenting process this report is confidential.