Effects of Hat Style on Thermal Discomfort in Extreme Heat Conditions

Hats are commonly worn by people in extreme heat conditions, in a variety of colors and styles. In hot environments with high amounts of incident radiation, people often experience significant thermal discomfort, and conventional wisdom leads many of those people to wear hats to alleviate some of their discomfort. Despite this common practice, the effectiveness of different styles and colors of hats relative to each other has not been thoroughly researched. Hats can have varied impacts on the factors which impact thermal discomfort, including incident radiation, convective heat loss, and evaporative heat loss from sweat. The difference between styles and colors of hats can cause them to have different interactions with these methods of heat transfer, which lead to variance in the total impact on thermal discomfort. This research was conducted in order to create an experimentally justified recommendation for hat selection to limit thermal discomfort in hot and sunny areas.