thermal comfort

The research objectives of this study are to develop and validate a detailed simulation model of a test cell which was used to measure heat balances for comfort evaluation. 

The test lecture rooms of KU Leuven Ghent Technology Campus are one the demonstration cases of IEA EBC Annex 62: Ventilative Cooling. This nZEB school building is realised on top of an existing university building and contains 2 large lecture rooms for maximum 80 students with a floor area of 140m² each. An all air system with balanced mechanical ventilation is installed for ventilation, heating and cooling.

In order to provide patients with a high quality indoor environment and ensure a pleasant working place for medical care personnel, thermal environment and indoor air quality are regarded as two of the most important requirements. 

Norwegian building regulations refer to the NS-EN 15251 and the NS-ISO 7730 to define indoor climate criteria in new buildings. For example, the standards prescribe a temperature band of 20-26°C for a normal office situation. Any HVAC engineer or facility manager would however willingly state that office buildings in practice are run with a much smaller temperature dead-band, and that building occupants would complain if temperatures were as high as 26°C.

Indoor air quality and thermal comfort was measured in 14 three-bedroom, semi-detached, cavity wall naturally-ventilated homes during the winter following an energy efficient retrofit. As part of the energy retrofit, homes received new windows and doors, an upgraded heating system, attic insulation, and wall vents, as well as pumped beaded wall insulation into three external walls.

Natural ventilation has the potential to provide cooling and fresh air and cut 40% of the total energy consumption of European office buildings. While in the milder seasons natural ventilation is an obvious low-energy choice, if poorly designed it can cause overheating in summer and poor air quality in winter. In order to promote the use and design of naturally ventilated (NV) buildings, it is therefore important to understand how current NV buildings perform in terms of thermal comfort and indoor air quality.

Thermal comfort is an important aspect of the building design and indoor climate control as modern man spends most of the day indoors. Conventional indoor climate design and control approaches are based on static thermal comfort models that views the building occupants as passive recipients of their thermal environment. Assuming that people have relatively constant range of biological comfort requirements, and that the indoor environmental variables should be controlled to conform to that constant range.

According to the 2016 Household Projections report, England’s housing stock could reach 28 million households by 2039 with approximately one fifth being new constructions. A significant proportion of these newly built dwellings may face a high risk of overheating as a result of the combined effects of climate change and more stringent building thermal efficiency standards, if not appropriately designed.

In the present paper the impact of natural cross-ventilation on thermal comfort levels in sustainable residential buildings is evaluated. A sustainable dwelling is designed in Crete and various scenarios of different combinations of open windows and doors in the ground floor, the first floor and between the floors are tested to determine the final scenarios with the best possible airflow movement.