office building

The airtightness of office and educational buildings influences energy use and thermal comfort. A leaky building is likely to have a high use of energy and thermal discomfort. The knowledge of real airtightness levels of entire buildings and their impact on the energy use is very low, except for a study carried out in the USA. Therefore two different methods of airtightness testing were applied to six entire Swedish office and educational buildings built since 2000. The first method involves using the ventilation system of the building and the second one to use a number of blower doors.

In this study, an attempt is made to define building design variables for a medium-sized office building with individual office cells in order to provide sufficient summer comfort without active cooling in a moderate climate.
Firstly, an approach to take realistic window-opening behavior into account is proposed based on observational data in literature. A stochastic model is defined for an active and a passive user, representing the variability between individuals.

The scope of the research described in this paper is to develop, evaluate and propose a new empirical index, the so-called Index of Workplace Comfort (IWC), which quantifies the overall comfort sensation of a user in an office building. The proposed Index of Workplace Comfort is calculated on the basis of both environmental and psychological properly weighted sensation votes of workplace occupants.

In the light of global environmental problems, it is vital for buildings to conserve energy and make use of natural energies. Natural ventilation is one important method for achieving this. In houses, natural ventilation is a very attractive way to control the indoor environment. Compared to this, mid- to high-rise buildings include many closed spaces where windows cannot be opened and internal heat is trapped inside, which increases the cooling load. Based on this situation, consciousness of environmentally friendly buildings and utilization of natural energy becomes high.

Many modern office buildings have highly glazed facades. Their energy efficiency and indoor climateis, however, being questioned. Therefore more and more of these buildings are being built with doubleskin facades, which can provide: a thermal buffer zone, energy savings, wind protection with openwindows, fire protection, aesthetics, solar preheating of ventilation air, sound protection, pollutantprotection with open windows, nocturnal cooling and a site for incorporation of PV cells.

The authors have created a Neural-Fuzzy Assistant which acts as a Decision Support System and helps to perform quickly and easily the estimations of office building energy consumption. The Neural-Fuzzy Assistant presented in this paper allows the user to determine the impact of eleven building parameters on the electrical annual and monthly energy consumption, annual and monthly maximum electrical demand and cooling and heating annual consumption and demand.

Analytic models and static approaches as the case of Fanger, Deval, Sherman, Gagge, and Stolwijkmodels cannot completely predict indoor thermal comfort. Building designers could take advantage of adaptive approach of thermal comfort which can account for the complex interaction betweenoccupants and their environment that could affect their comfort.We had carried a field study in two office buildings on March 2005. It has included physicalmeasurements and questionnaires on thermal perception and appreciation.

The cooling loads of an office building vary with the desired indoor thermal climate. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how significantly the various indoor climate criteria affect the overallenvironmental performance of the air-conditioning systems. Here, we analyze the environmentalconsequences of the energy use, as well as the possible modifications of the system design andcorresponding use of materials. The analysis is based on a theoretical case study of an airconditioning system designed for a typical office building situated in Sweden.

The paper evaluates the potential work performance benefits of increased ventilation. We analysed the literature relating work performance with ventilation rate and employed statistical analyses. The studies included in the review assessed performance of various tasks in laboratory experiments and measured performance at work in real buildings. Almost all studies found increases in performance with higher ventilation rates. The studies indicated typically a 1-3 % improvement in average performance per 10 L/sperson increase in outdoor air ventilation rate.

Many modern office buildings have highly glazed facades. Their energy efficiency and indoor climateis, however, being questioned.