Abstract: Abstract At industrial workplaces, such as firefighting, steel work, metallurgical and glass work, the workers are inclined to suffer from heat strain. In this paper a cooling vest which was used for alleviating heat strain was studied. Thermal manikin was utilized to evaluate the thermal adjusting effect of the cooling vest in a hot environment. The environment temperature was 32 oC with a strong radiation of 1000W to simulate a steel working environment. In the simulated two working shifts, the skin temperature for each local part of the manikin had the following trend: T head and neck > T other parts > T abdomen and buttocks > T chest and back. At the end of the experiment, the skin temperature of chest and back of the manikin wearing the cooling was 34 oC, which was 6.3 oC lower than that of without wearing the cooling vest. The experiment indicated that the cooling vest could decrease the skin temperature of manikin’s torso covered with PCMs, and that alleviate heat stress and prolong working time in hot environment.

Key words: strong radiation , cooling vest , skin temperature , heat stress