In the present study, the thermal comfort in a convertible has been evaluated using the in-house program TEKOS. The investigations have been performed for a SLK-class Mercedes with two occupants. The computational mesh consists of about 3 million hexahedra cells.
TEKOS has been adapted to open driving conditions. The influence of the air-conditioning system and of different draft stops on the thermal comfort has been investigated in an autumn case.
The study has shown, that in a basic case without draft stop and air conditioning the evaluation results in very poor thermal comfort values at the whole body, especially at unclothed parts of the body. If a draft stop and maximum heating is regarded, almost all parts of the body are close to the comfort range except of the head region.
With TEKOS it is possible to quantify the influence of different parameters on the thermal sensation in convertibles with the advantage of an objective thermal evaluation.