Diagnosing occupant complaints is not an easy task. The following article is a guide for engineers and owners confronted with hot/cold problems. It advises how to evaluate the occupant's complaint (with seven questions), then to review the HVAC equipment performances for a proper operation, to make load calculations, to review zoning conflicts and draft problems, to measure the humidity level, and the omni-directional drafts.
The main objective of this study is to develop a thermal comfort (TC) prediction model suitable for Naturally Ventilated (NV) buildings located in hot and humid tropical climate. More than 1000 data were collected through extensive field survey in Singapore and Indonesia. The surveys finding based on the statistical analyses unveiled that people in the tropics have shown tolerance and different perception of TC than those in the temperate climate. Fuzzy logic concept is adopted to develop an appropriate TC model for tropical NV houses.
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
By simulating ‘the ramp change of thermal environment’ in the laboratory, we carried out the thermal comfort experiment and observed the changes of subjects' thermal reaction to the ramp change. We compared the effect of air velocity on the change of subj
The purpose of this study is to identify the causality explaining indoor concentrations offormaldehyde, VOCs and fungi which have significant health effects. In the rainy season(July), summer (August), autumn (October) and winter (December), measurements werecarried out in three newly built apartment complexes. In each complex the same buildingmaterials were used.
Cavity wall is often proposed in the building envelope design as a solution for improving the thermal comfort of the inhabitants and reducing the adverse condensation effects on the building fabric. In order to evaluate the thermal effect of ventilated air gaps on building energy demand and comfort, an experimental ventilated cavity wall has been built and tested. The cavity wall separates two ambients at different temperatures that are assumed to be constant over the time required to perform the experimental analysis.
Ventilation and comfort assessment of buildings is not a new practice in post occupancy evaluation (POE) of buildings. Most evaluations have been based on perceived assessments by the occupants collated through questionnaires asking for a Yes/No response or qualitative scale rating. While this study does not deal with a POE survey, it was initiated by the lack of comfort and overheating complaints of the occupants of the subject university building.
In this work two numerical models are presented. The first one simulates the buildings thermal response and evaluates the internal air quality, while the second one simulates the human and clothing thermal systems and calculates the thermal comfort level in non-uniform environments. The results obtained by the first model are used as input data in the second one.
Present international standard for thermal comfort such as ASHRAE Standard 55 and ISO 7730 were developed to serve as a guideline for moderate thermal environments e.g. mechanically airconditioned spaces [CEN ISO 1995]. Recent thermal comfort studies had reported that some discrepancies were observed in its application for Naturally Ventilated (NV) buildings in hot and
An improper air distribution within air-conditioned rooms is one of the largest causes of inadequate indoor air quality and thermal comfort. A good knowledge of the phenomena allows for the advance of eventual deficiencies, thus becoming a powerful tool for the optimization of new projects or for the improvement of the operation conditions of the projects already implemented. In this study two methods were applied, one computational and the other experimental, for modelling of non-isothermal turbulent flows in airconditioned rooms. The computational model consists of a numerical
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