USAF Physiological Studies of Personal Microclimate Cooling: A Review

The U.S. Air Force has accomplished a number of research studies which evaluated the efficacy of selected personal cooling approaches for alleviating heat stress in personnel wearing certain protective clothing. Most of this work involved laboratory, as opposed to field, studies and incorporated human subjects performing work in either warm or hot environments. Both air and liquid microclimate cooling systems were evaluated. The general findings include: (1) personal microclimate cooling systems (both air and liquid) were shown to remove significant quantities of body heat, (2) in general, commercially available systems were Inferior to in-house prototype units, (3) backpack (ambulatory) systems usage would likely have a limited user audience for a number of reasons, (4) some near-term; partial solutions to the problem may be at hand for selected deployments, and (5) microclimate cooling technologies on the horizon will likely not provide an optimum solution for most ground crew applications. The USAF Armstrong Laboratory has limited plans for further research in this area... Air cooling, Microclimate liquid cooling, Heat stress, Personal cooling, Intermittent cooling.