Measure and model of free hanging sound absorbers impact on thermal comfort

A current trend is to consider that the presence of free hanging sound absorbers (FHU) installed in Thermally Activated Buildings (TABS) reduces the thermal comfort by lowering radiative and convective exchanges with the cooled concrete slab. In this study we propose a simple thermal model of FHU which may be implemented into building simulation software like TRNSys. This model considers convective and radiative exchanges but also the air flows above and below FHU. Experimentally, we observe that a ceiling coverage of 50% leads to a operative temperature increase of 0.3°C. In the same conditions, the proposed model very well agrees with measurements. However, for a coverage ratio of 70%, we measure an increase of 1.0 °C and model 0.5°C. New experiments are currently running to confirm these first results and improve the model.