The primary purpose of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system is to makeoccupants comfortable. Without real-time practical measurement and method to determinehuman thermal comfort, it may not be feasible that the HVAC system can provide humancomfortable all the time. This paper presents a practical measurement and model to determinehuman thermal comfort index for feedback control. The proposed model is developed basedon the original thermal comfort index called predicted mean vote (PMV) index by applyingfeed-forward neural network model.
The use of high-speed rotary and spray-producing instruments can pose a serious risk indental clinics, by continuously creating a potential harmful contamination of the room. Indoorclimate parameters (temperature, relative humidity) and microbiological airbornecontamination (total bacterial count at 37C, fungal particles) were evaluated in 12 privatedental clinics, partially equipped with air conditioning systems. Carbon dioxide airconcentrations were also measured to evaluate the efficacy of air exchange. Air microbialcounts were highest in the consulting rooms and waiting rooms.
One challenge in indoor air quality studies is the measurement of three-dimensional air velocity profiles in an airspace so that the nature of airflow can be better understood and appropriate ventilation systems can be designed. There is much dispute over a variety of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, primarily due to a lack of credible data to validate those models. This study aimed to develop a stereoscopic particle imaging velocimetry (SPIV) system suitable for easurement of full-scale room three-dimensional airflow.
This paper documents people’s comfort during a 24-h period of typical daily life, immediately followed by a standard climate chamber experiment. The objective of this study is to determine the influence of outdoor weather, expectation, adaptive behaviours
A questionnaire on e.g. building characteristics including dampness, and allergic symptomsamong children from 8 918 homes was carried out in the year 2000. 18-24 months later, 6professional inspectors visited 390 of the homes and made inspections and measurements.Questionnaire reports on building characteristics, type of ventilation system, and buildingmaterials were in good agreement with observations from the inspectors (K=0.68-0.87). Individualkappa-values for the inspectors varied in the range of 0.33-0.96.
In order to identify the effects of various kinds of floor materials and that of humidity on theconcentration of mite allergens in houses of allergy patients, measurements were carried outin two houses near Tokyo in August, November and December 2001. Temperature, humidityand mite allergens, Der p 1, Der f 1 and Der 2, were measured and a questionnaire survey wasconducted.
This paper discusses research conducted to determine the status of indoor air chemicalpollution caused by formaldehyde in government offices in 2001. This research involvedmeasurements of formaldehyde concentration and questionnaires on the office rooms inapproximately 300 buildings.
As part of a larger indoor environmental study, residential indoor and outdoor levels ofnitrogen dioxide (NO2) were measured for 14 houses in a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland,Australia. Passive samplers were used for 48-h sampling periods during the winter of 1999.The average indoor and outdoor NO2 levels were 13.8 6.3 and 16.7 4.2 ppb, respectively.The indoor/outdoor NO2 concentration ratio ranged from 0.4 to 2.3, with a median value of0.82.
The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental setup developed to characterizereactions between ozone and building products and document their potential impact on indoorair quality. Preliminary experiments were conducted on four building products: two carpets, agypsum board and a pine wood board. These preliminary experiments clearly indicate thatozone is significantly removed in contact with the four selected products. Measured ozoneremoval were around 65% for the two carpets, 70% for the gypsum board and 75% for thepine wood board.
Unique means to evaluate IAQ with passive sampling devices are described in this paper.They are simple, silent and require less equipment. Field measurements in a newlyconstructed, multi-family residential building were conducted with these means and theresults show the effect of ventilation, occupancy and interior finishing on IAQ. Indoor airconcentration, emission rates from indoor surfaces and ventilation rate were measured bypassive sampling methods. The ADSEC method was used for emission measurements. ThePFT method was used for measurement of the ventilation rate.