THERMAL COMFORT FINDINGS: SCENARIO AT MALAYSIAN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Abstract

This paper discusses the findings of thermal comfort assessment at alaysian automotive industry. Nine critical workstations were chosen as ubjects for the study in order to determine the thermal comfort among orkers at Malaysian automotive industry. The human subjects for the study omprises of the operators from tire receiving, dashboard assembly, drum ester, body assembly, seat assembly, door check assembly, stamping orkstation, engine sub assembly and paint shop of the factory. The nvironmental factors such as Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), elative humidity, air velocity, illuminance were measured using BABUC A pparatus and Thermal Comfort Measurement equipment. Through uestionnaire survey, the demographic data of subjects and their erceptions on thermal comfort at each workstation were assessed based on SO Standard 7730 and thermal sensation scale using Predicted Mean Vote PMV). Then, Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) is used to estimate he thermal satisfaction of occupants. The results indicated that most of the orkstations of the automotive industry are considered as uncomfortable. ire receiving station is considered having better working environment ompared to other stations with lowest PMV index of 1.09 to 1.41 and PPD f 46%. Meanwhile, the engine sub assembly station and paint shop of ssembly are considered the worst thermal environment with the PMV index alues ranging between 2.1 to 2.9 and PPD values of 81% to 99%. herefore, these two workstations are considered not comfortable because he thermal sensation scale is warm and almost hot.

Keywords

Dates

  • Submission Date2011-11-11
  • Revision Date2012-01-17
  • Acceptance Date2012-01-17

DOI Reference

10.2298/TSCI111111015I

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