Thermal Sleeping Environments

Shiming Deng is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Qatar University. Prior to this, he worked at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 1992 to 2021. His research interests include controlling thermal sleeping environments and air source heat pumps, among others, with a total of more than 300 publications in international journals. Zhongping Lin received his PhD from the Department of Building Services Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2005 and is currently a Professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University. His research interests include controlling indoor air quality, thermal environments, pollutant control, and clean air technology. He is also a member of the National Technical Committee for Standardization of Clean Rooms and Related Controlled Environments. Dongmei Pan is currently a Lecturer at the School of Mechanical and Automobile Engineering, South China University of Technology. Her research interests include controlling thermal sleeping environments and building energy savings, among others, with a total of more than 40 publications in international journals. Ning Mao is currently an Associate Professor at the College of Pipeline and Civil Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China). His current research work is related to building envelopes for energy saving, phase-change materials, heat pumps, indoor thermal environment (including sleeping thermal comfort and ventilation), and multi-objective optimization, among others. Jing Du is currently a Lecturer at School of Construction Engineering, Shenzhen Polytechnic University. Her research interests include sleeping thermal comfort, indoor thermal environment simulation, and many others. Guanyu Fang, after receiving his PhD from the Department of Building Services Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2021, joined the R&D team at PaXini Technology Ltd., a company of universal humanoid robots for multiple scenarios and automation technology. His current research interests include sleeping thermal comfort, air source heat pumps, and energy-saving technologies for buildings, among others.

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Indoor space thermal loads for a sleep environment
4. Outdoor air ventilation for an indoor sleep environment
5. A thermal comfort model for a sleeping person
6. The thermal resistance of bedding systems used in thermal comfort model
7. Solving a comfort equation and establishing comfort charts
8. Numerical prediction of the total insulation value of a bedding system
9. A four-node thermoregulation model for predicting the thermal physiological responses of a sleeping person
10. The micro-climate around a sleeping person and the related thermal neutrality issues
11. Novel bed-based task/ambient conditioning (TAC) systems and their optimizations for a thermally neutral environment with minimum energy use
12. A radiation-based TAC system including moisture distribution and a way of mitigating condensation in a sleeping environment
13. A bed-based air source heat pump (B-ASHP) space heating system in a sleep environment
14. Practical guides to control indoor thermal environments for quality sleep
15. Conclusions and future perspectives