Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2018

Department

Mechanical Engineering Technology

Committee Chair

Charles Pringle

Second Committee Member

Roger Beardsley

Third Committee Member

Craig Johnson

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to document the progression of the authors senior project. . The of that project was the research of Liquid Cooled Garment (LCG) technology, the generation of a novel LCG prototype and the testing of that prototype relative to a commercial benchmark. As such, this report is a complete narrative of the of these tasks, their execution and the underlying assumptions and commentary. The motivation for this report is to satisfy the capstone requirements of the MET program at CWU by documenting the Senior Project and its subordinate tasks. First, the student designed a LCG system based on the knowledge gained from his coursework and independent research. Two water-circulating vests were constructed from copper tubing, and a third military-surplus device was purchased from Ebay. All three were tested using a sample set of college aged males performing routine exercises. Afterward, the test subjects were served with a likert-scale survey and short-answer questions, so that the qualitative properties of the vests could be recorded. It was determined that the benchmark vest had a superior heat transfer effect, but the optimization of the copper vests produced an end product that was more comfortable than the initial prototype and had a greater perceived effectiveness than the benchmark.

Share

COinS