Do not forget sunscreen and take your sunglasses. Or maybe a warm jacket and gloves? It depends on the test that is currently ongoing. In the following text, we will take you to the climate chamber, which has been operating at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering since 2013. In this unique laboratory, almost anything can be exposed to extreme conditions: a car, technical equipment, or even people who are, however, represented by the Newton Thermal Manikin during really extreme tests.

The idea to conduct research in the field of thermal comfort was born in the head of Professor Miroslav Jícha from the Energy Institute sometime in 2004. For his intention, he selected the then fresh doctoral student Jan Fišer, who is now the leader of the climate chamber team. However, he too had to wait almost ten years for the ceremonial opening of this modern laboratory, as the door to the kingdom of climatic extremes did not open until 8 October 2013.

“Even so, the research was a struggle in the beginning. When a new laboratory opens, no one boasts the fact that it takes several years before it starts to bring real results. The climate chamber is not a mass-produced product, it is a prototype and for the first year or two we got acquainted with it and tuned its operation. Then the team gradually began to gain experience and the crucial know-how. Only after that did the first successes come. We have had a lot of orders for the last two years, even so many that we have recently had to reject some interested parties,” Fišer recalls.

The climate chamber was created with the intention of testing the thermal comfort in vehicle cabins and their climate resistance. In this respect, it is perhaps not surprising that research and contracts for the automotive industry are still crucial today. “We have the strongest cooperation with Škoda Auto and Volkswagen, but we also cooperate with other companies and our scope is relatively wide,” says researcher Barbora Kopečková from a team of almost ten members.

According to scientists, the advantage of the climate chamber is that it is very universal and at the same time very true to reality. On the imaginary Siberia – Sahara axis, almost anything can be simulated in Brno. “We can create temperatures from -40 ° C to +85 ° C, we can turn on the artificial sun, which can then move over the vehicle, or we can simulate up to 95% humidity” says the team’s chief designer Ondřej Pech. “For example, we can simulate the desert conditions in Abu Dhabi and find out if the product’s electronics will overheat after a day in the sun or if any important part of the machine is damaged by heat,” he adds. Similarly, a few years ago, they tested washing machines for industrial laundries in the chamber for colleagues from the Institute of Process Engineering. The aim was to find out whether their electronics will work safely and not start to spark through at the high temperatures and humidity common in such laundries.

Newton is also present during our visit to the laboratory, seen taking a break in the corner of the room, but during some measurements, this thermal mannequin is simply irreplaceable. For example, in the joint research with the National Institute for Nuclear, Chemical and Biological Protection. “We test protective suits for firefighters, chemical specialists, soldiers and police officers. If a person is wearing an airtight protective suit, they will immediately start sweating and overheating. Thanks to the Newton Thermal Manikin, we are able to measure the characteristics of the suit and input them into models and simulations. From these, we can then estimate how long a person would last under a given load in a suit without overheating and collapsing,” Kopečková describes the research that goes far beyond the search for thermal comfort and extends to occupational safety and health.

Newton is a hard worker who always measures accurately, tirelessly, and can be exposed to conditions that could harm a living person. It has 34 independent thermal zones on it “body”, from which sensors and software models evaluate the thermal feeling and comfort on it individual parts. It can simulate mouth and nose breathing and its filter captures aerosol particles. Even so, it must sometimes be supplemented or even replaced by living people.

“The mannequin will test a lot for us, but you need real people to fine-tune the models and final versions of the comfort devices. So sometimes, we are the guinea pigs,” says Fišer with a smile, adding that testing with volunteers brings completely new challenges for engineers. “Research with testing on persons is always approved by the ethics committee, so that we do not, even unknowingly, get into conditions during the test, which may be unsuitable or even dangerous for some people. And we also had to learn something about psychology. We worked with psychologists from the HumeLAB laboratory at Masaryk University on how to instruct the test subjects, because we must not influence them in advance. Improper instruction could influence them negatively or make them want to satisfy us, while inadvertently influencing the result of the experiment. The fact that the chamber is a truly universal tool leads us a to a rather multi-disciplinary approach,” adds Fišer.

Researchers assume that the main topics for the coming years will be mainly electromobility and thermal management of products. They will examine the thermal comfort of vehicle cabins, as well as the batteries, which suffer significantly from extreme temperatures, both in terms of service life and performance.

You can learn more about the climate chamber here.