Empirical Evaluation of Diving Wet Suit Material Heat Transfer and Thermal Conductivity

Abstract This wet suit material testing program provides a quantitative thermal conductivity and heat transfer analysis, and comparison of various materials used in skin diving and SCUBA diving. Thermal resistance represents the primary subject examined, but due to compressibility of the baseline materials and its effect on heat transfer, this program also examines compression at simulated depth. This article reports the empirical heat transfer coefficients for both thermal conductivity and convection. Due to the limitations of the test apparatus, this analysis must restrict the convection evaluation to an approximately 20-cm-height, free-convection model. As a consequence, this model best simulates the overall heat transfer coefficient of a diver hovering in a horizontal position. This program also includes evaluations of some nonstandard materials in an effort to identify alternative wet suit materials.

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