초록
Research for climate control seats is being vigorously pursued because requests for passenger's thermal comfort are increasing. Recently, thermoelectric devices have been applied to automotive seats for both cooling and heating operations. The climate control seats using thermoelectric devices can rapidly control the air temperature passing through the devices and directly affect the thermal comfort of passengers. The performance characteristics of the climate control seats were analyzed by experiments for two different types of a leather covered seat and a mesh applied seat. Experimental results show that the cooling and heating performance for the mesh applied seat by using the discharge port of the shape of nozzle was improved significantly in comparison with that for the leather covered seat. The variation of temperature between the inlet air and the outlet air of the climate control seat for the enhanced mesh applied type was by $-3.5^{\circ}C$ at cooling mode, and was by $15.0^{\circ}C$ at heating mode, after about 30 minutes, respectively. Also, it is possible to provide rapid thermal comfort to passengers sitting on the seat in the vehicle cabin by using the proposed climate control seat.
