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Dermal Cooling Vest

Background

Overexposure to heat is serious and can cause heat-related illnesses such as muscle cramping, fatigue, headache, dizziness or fainting, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, which can be fatal. The dermal cooling vest removes heat to regulate body temperature when sweat and breeze aren't cutting it, especially during extraneous activity. 

Objective

Our team has identified the market of choice, as well as the soft and hard requirements of those users, in order to determine the importance of certain features of the vest while moving forward with protecting people from heat-related illnesses. The vest is designed to be comfortable, controllable, mobile, and long-lasting. In terms of quantitative goals, the vest should produce 75W of cooling, weigh under 8 pounds, allow the user to have a full range of motion, and keep cool for over 1.5 hours on a single charge.

Final Design

The final design consists of a vest that cools through conduction methods. This is done through a Peltier device cooling the water that is pumped and circulated around the vest. The user can also interact wirelessly with the vest through the smartphone app which is capable of controlling when to turn the vest on or off and the desired temperature. Additionally, the app can give feedback to the user by displaying the temperature of the vest, the battery life left for cooling, and warning alerts for system malware. 

Summary of Performance

This initial prototype is capable of over 70 W of input power to the Peltier cooling plates for 2 hours. Optimization of cooling devices and extra battery power will increase cooling ability.