G Love
G Love
Team 2: 3.082 Spring 2002
Kristin Brodie, Jeff Colton, Colin Galbraith, Bushra Makiya, and Tiffany Santos
The goal of this team project was to design a lightweight heating system for a pair of gloves that will maintain a comfortable temperature. Several of the key glove components are the heating element, temperature sensor, power supply, and insulation. Two different strategies to heat the gloves were considered. The first was to use metallic wire as the heating element with a thin, flat, lithium battery, located on the back side of the palm, to supply power to heat the gloves. A bimetallic thermal switch was incorporated into the circuit to prevent overheating. The second strategy was to use phase change materials (PCMs) to heat the gloves. PCMs supply a significant amount of heat while freezing, giving off heat to warm the hand in the glove. A simple heat transfer calculation was used to determine the power necessary to maintain a comfortable temperature. Both the wire and PCM gloves were designed to meet this specification (2.7W).
This is a picture of the final product, including the outer layer of the gloves in addition to one inner layer of glove material with wire and battery attached and one with phase change material sewn into the pockets in the lining.
A glove with the wire heating element, battery, and thermal switch.
A glove with phase change material as the heating element.
