Windward Cooling: An Overlooked Factor in the Calculation of Wind Chill

Abstract

Wind chill equivalent temperatures calculated from a recent vertical cylinder model of wind chill are several degrees colder than those calculated from a facial cooling model. The latter was based on experiments with a heated model of a face in a wind tunnel. Wind chill has sometimes been modeled as the overall heat transfer from the surface of a cylinder in cross flow, but such models average the cooling over the whole surface and thus minimize the effect of local cooling on the upwind side, particularly at low wind speeds. In this paper, a vertical cylinder model of wind chill has been modified so that just the cooling of its windward side is considered. Wind chill equivalent temperatures calculated with this new model compare favorably with those calculated by the facial cooling model.