Parked Car Interior Temperature Investigation in Brunei Darussalam

Abstract

When a car is parked under the sunlight for a long period of time, solar radiation enters the vehicle through the car glass and becomes trapped inside the car. This causes the cabin interior air temperature to increase and this is especially noticeable in tropical countries with hot and humid climates that are situated near the equator like Brunei Darussalam. Aside from causing thermal discomfort to the passengers inside the car, degradation of the surfaces of the car interior may also be accelerated. This paper aims to demonstrate the severity of the heat by recording a number of temperature measurements in a certain period of time for two different types of cars, under three different conditions for each car and comparing them to the ambient temperature. It is observed that the interior temperature depends on the design of the car. We experimented temperature measurements for two types of car models, i.e., saloon and SUV models. Saloon car is design such as way that its interior volumes space is smaller than the SUV designed car. The smaller interior volume spaced Saloon car exhibits higher maximum temperature of 68.7°C whereas the larger interior volume spaced SUV car exhibits maximum temperature of 59.4°C under fully exposed to sun with same environmental conditions.