Research on the novel medical protective clothing for COVID-19.

ABSTRACT

With the outbreak of COVID-19, a large number of medical staffs have invested in the front line of anti-epidemic. Medical protective clothing (MPC) can provide a safe environment for the wearers to block bacteria and viruses. However, nowadays, the thermal performance of MPC on the market is very poor, resulting in the extremely low comfort of the wearer. Some improved MPCs were made of materials, which were not easy to obtain with high cost. Some improved MPCs were lack of thermal comfort experimental data based on real human body. Therefore, this paper proposed a novel MPC with reusable PCM and ventilation. Through simulation and experiment, human comfort of the novel MPC was compared with the other two kinds of MPCs. Five subjects were invited to carried out the comfort tests under three states of motion with three types of MPCs. The results showed the novel MPC with higher cost performance in the effective period had been proved that PPD decreased by 39.5% than the traditional MPC. Besides, the novel MPC could meet the comfort requirements of medical staffs for one shift. Furthermore, the work can provide theoretical methods and basic experimental data for the continuous improvement of the comfort and safety of MPC.