Radiant Heat Transfer in Tentage

Radiant heat transfer was analyzed for tents consisting of single layer fabric walls which are capable of partially transmitting thermal radiation. External radiant temperatures were uniform. Radiant heat loss from the tent surface to the external surroundings was found theoretically to represent approximately 25 of the total heat loss from the tent. Theoretical predictions of the fraction radiated to the floor of the tent, based on experimentally determined surface temperatures, agreed to within an order of magnitude with the measured radiant heat flux to the floor. Signal noise and measurement precision affected these experimental results. An empirical equation for predicting sky temperature was compared with measured sky temperature and was found to underestimate the sky temperature by approximately 10.