neutral temperature

Thermal comfort studies have been performed so far either in closed climate chambers with controlled conditions or non-controlled conditions during field studies. Detailed analyses of mechanisms behind the adaptive comfort models are therefore hardly possible. This paper presents a newly constructed climate chamber in Karlsruhe (Germany) along with the complete chain from subjective experiments, via data analyses, model development and implementation into dynamic building energy simulation until the formation of a decision base for or against a renovation measure for a confined case.

Although the adaptive comfort model has gained unprecedented popularization during the past few decades, the mechanism behind the model, especially with regard to certain key hypotheses, still requires further clarification. To validate whether people with greater individual control tend to attain comfort state in wider ranges of indoor thermal environments, we designed an investigational study in Beijing apartments with different degrees of individual control over space heating systems.

A field study on thermal comfort has been carried out in the capital city of Jakarta, Indonesia. There were 596 office workers working in seven multi-storey office buildings participated in this study. Predicted neutral temperatures were read from thermal comfort meter type 1212, while the subjects' thermal sensations (the actual votes) were collected by means of questionnaire.