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Thermal comfort has an important role in human life, considering that people spend most of their lives in indoor environments. However, the necessity of ensuring the thermal comfort of these people presents an important problem, calculating the thermal comfort accurately. The assessment of thermal comfort has always been problematic, from past to present, and the studies conducted in this field have indicated that there is a gap between thermal comfort and thermal sensation. Although recent studies have shown an effort to take human psychology into account more extensively, these studies just focused on the physiological responses of the human body under psychological disturbances. On the other hand, the mood state of people is one of the most significant parameters of human psychology. Thus, this paper investigated the effect of occupants’ mood states on thermal sensation; furthermore, it introduced a novel “Mood State Correction Factor” (MSCF) to the existing thermal comfort model. To this aim, experiments were conducted at a mixed-mode building in a university between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2022. Actual Mean Vote (AMV) and Profile of Mood States (POMS) were used to examine the effect of mood state on thermal sensation. The outcomes of this study showed that in the mood states of very pessimistic and very optimistic, the occupants felt warmer than the calculated one and the MSCFs are calculated as −0.125 and −0.114 for the very pessimistic and very optimistic mood states, respectively. It is worth our time to note that the experiments in this study were conducted during the COVID-19 Global Pandemic and the results of this study could differ in different cultural backgrounds.

Traditional building design education in the disciplines of building services, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. focusses on quantifiable factors, i.e. factors which can be subject of calculation, simulation and dimensioning. Since non-quantifiable factors are not part of calculation or simulation models, there is a tendency that they are not adequately considered in education and, as a result, in building planning and operation. In the case of human thermal comfort, building professionals are required to understand the mechanisms and impact of non-quantifiable factors related to human thermal comfort and health, most of which are part of the adaptive thermal comfort concept. This paper identifies the challenges in teaching the concept of adaptive thermal comfort through a collection of lived experiences of the authors. The paper then proposes appropriate intended learning outcomes and teaching methods to equip students with the background knowledge, understanding and skills required to consider human adaptation in their designs.It is widely accepted that integrated design is a precondition for a building design that functions well, offers sufficient comfort for their users and can be operated in a sustainable way. Integrated building design requires that different disciplines work closely together and understand and respect their different focus areas and languages. Herein the case of human thermal comfort requires engineers who understand the mechanisms and impact of non-quantifiable factors on human well-being indoors. Within the work of Annex 69: “Strategy and practice of adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings” we developed a framework and a guideline for adopting adaptive thermal comfort principles in design and operation of buildings, which may serve as a complementary tool in an integrated design process and inclusion of adaptive thermal comfort in education.

The concept of adaptive thermal comfort was formulated many decades ago and has been validated in numerous field studies. As a result, wider acceptable indoor temperature ranges based on adaptive models have been included in international and national standards and the adaptive approach to thermal comfort is regarded as a significant contributor in achieving low energy building design and operation. Despite the ever-increasing scientific literature on adaptive comfort around the world, the overall understanding of how to translate the adaptive principles into design practice and concepts for operating buildings is still limited, which suggests a gap between the scientific outcomes and the real-world applications. This discussion paper identifies the challenges and gaps in using the principles of adaptive thermal comfort by design practitioners and discusses them in light of relevant research findings. More than 100 literature sources were reviewed in support of the discussion. The paper then proposes a framework that aims to facilitate the adoption of adaptive comfort principles in design and operation of buildings and describes the outline of an imminent guideline for low energy building design based on the concept of adaptive thermal comfort.

In the field investigation of rural dwellings, it was found that thermal feelings are significantly different with varied envelopes even under the same indoor air temperature, and this paper explores the phenomenon in simulation. Based on building thermal investigations in several villages of North China, a typical energy and environment simulation model for rural residences was developed using DeST, and the hourly parameters of temperature and humidity were used to calculate the adaptive thermal comfort (APMV) of the rooms. The results show that the main reason for the different thermal comfort at the same air temperature is the large difference in the inner surface temperature. By adjusting the insulation thickness of the envelope structure, the relationship between it and the APMV value is obtained. By adjusting the insulation thickness of the enclosure structure and getting the correlation between it and the APMV value, it is obtained that when the heat transfer coefficient of the enclosure structure meets 0.5 W/(m2·K), the indoors can be in thermal comfort. This paper considers that the indoor air temperature cannot represent the APMV to evaluate the indoor thermal comfort, and the APMV value should be used to evaluate the thermal comfort of the renovated building and calculate the corresponding energy saving rate.

Green building technologies and design-correlated choices may significantly contribute to supporting the transition toward net energy flows in the built environment. Nevertheless, large discrepancies are underlined between standard simulated and monitored building behaviours requiring approaches able to simply correlate real building behaviours and simulated ones to further support coherent certification and/or optimization. The paper focusses on the application of a semi-automatic methodology to compare and evaluate thermal behaviours of buildings considering monitored and simulated data. The approach is based on a new Python tool developed by the authors, able to manage EnergyPlus inputs and perform multi-source KPIs calculations. The mentioned tool is used here to support semi-automatic model verifications of real weather data by optimizing model parameters to fit monitored behaviours. The approach is applied in this chapter to two demo buildings, a municipality school and a residential unit, located in the Turin metropolitan area of Piedmont, in Northwest Italy.

The purpose of energy-saving retrofit of rural dwellings is to obtain a more comfortable indoor thermal environment with reasonable investment. The utilization rate of heating and air conditioning equipment for dwellings in poor rural areas is very low, and the buildings operate in natural ventilation mode all year round. Since the existing research on energy-saving retrofit is aimed at air-conditioned buildings, the research methods and results are not applicable to rural dwellings. This paper proposes a set of energy-saving retrofit evaluation methods suitable for natural ventilation buildings and applies it to the research on energy-saving retrofit of rural dwellings in cold climate regions of China. The specific process is as follows: First, this paper analyzed the current situation using field research and established a typical building model. Second, the DesignBuilder software was used to simulate all 725 schemes. Subsequently, the three main retrofit measures (replacing the external insulation windows, setting the external wall insulation layer and setting the roof insulation layer) were analyzed separately, and the optimal parameters of each retrofit measure were obtained. Finally, the entropy weight method was used to perform a multi-objective optimization analysis on all retrofit plans. The results show that 6+12A+6-mm insulating glass windows + 50-mm external wall insulation + 90-mm roof insulation is the optimal energy-saving reconstruction scheme. Compared with the benchmark building, the energy-saving rate of the optimal scheme is increased by 23.81%, and the annual adaptive thermal discomfort degree-hours are decreased by 13.17%.

The residential Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system use around 3/5 of the total energy consumption. Connected thermostats optimize the HVAC operation; however, householders have personality traits that lead into behavioral and usability problems toward the thermostat's interface usage. Thus, a serious game applied in the thermostat interface can balance entertainment and education. Therefore, thermostat interfaces must address strategies that reduce energy without losing thermal comfort. This paper proposed an interactive interface type and a predicted interface type based on an HVAC strategy and a Natural Ventilation strategy. These strategies measured the impact of adaptive thermal comfort, energy consumption, and costs. Hence, twelve energy models located in California (Concord, Riverside, Los Angeles, and San Diego) were simulated using EnergyPlus™ through LadybugTools. The first interactive interface included Serious Game elements, so the householder interacted with the date, location, and setpoint. The second interface predicted the energy consumption and thermal comfort during winter and summer in Concord by a two-layer feed-forward Artificial Neural Network structure. The proposed structure decreases the energy consumption by at least 62% without losing thermal comfort.

Many post-occupancy comfort studies of energy renovated residential buildings have documented elevated temperatures above comfort levels, not only during the summer period but also during the shoulder months. The main focus in renovation projects is on heat savings while the risk of overheating is not considered. This paper analyze in which situations overheating and cooling need to be addressed in building energy renovation projects and which renovation measures are causing this need. The analysis contains four reference single family houses from central and northern Europe. Both dynamic and static methods were used to assess the overheating risk. In terms of overheating occurrences, the most critical renovation measures are the insulation of the floor and the increase of the airtightness. The contribution of decreasing the g value of the window glazing is positive. The way to energy efficiency improvements also results in an extension of the overheating period and higher average and maximum building temperatures. The increase of the ventilation rates and the use of shading systems are useful measures for preventing overheating increase. The paper will highlight the inconsistencies which arise from the use of different criteria and also propose suggestions for future work.

This study proposes a novel 10-point numerical scale to evaluate long-term thermal comfort satisfaction. The available scale that verbally evaluates the short-term thermal comfort is thermal sensation vote (TSV) and this has substituted for the long-term thermal comfort assessment. However, the TSV has been questioned by many studies due to the ambiguous, widely different interpretation of each score and unequal perceived gaps between the scores. The paper argues the biological similarities between pain and temperature perceptions and proposes a numerical thermal comfort scale like that of long-term pain perception. Participants in a survey rated their long-term summer thermal comfort in the natural ventilation mode through the numerical and TSV scales. Ratings were compared after converting to degree hours based on monitoring temperature data for the same summer. The results show that the numerical scale provides an opportunity for respondents to express their long-term thermal comfort satisfaction level. Scoring by the numerical scale was convenient and clear to the respondents. The verbal scores of TSV, had different interpretations for individuals as each point was attributed to more than two values of degree hours. The score ‘Neutral’ was significantly ambiguous for assessing thermal comfort. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Thermal comfort is fundamental to indoor environmental design and operation as well as indoor thermal environment evaluation. This paper has reviewed the historic evolution of thermal comfort research during the last century using a systematic approach and a particular focus on adaptive thermal comfort studies. A large number of published articles as well as standards and guides were collected and screened based on a rigorous search method to ensure the literature database was both focused and complete. A further evaluation of representative prediction models has been conducted by applying the models to a large database and comparing the differences in their performance. Based on the review analysis, three representative thermal environment assessment approaches were classified as the heat balance approach, the adaptive regression-based approach and the adaptive heat balance approach. The strengths and constraints of each approach were analyzed. Comparisons of different models in the adaptive heat balance approach were conducted using the ASHRAE databases I&II. Thermal comfort theory and approaches have been developed which underpin standards and guidelines in building and engineering system design, operation and evaluation though there are pros and cons of different methods. The heat balance approach features the detailed parameters of design criteria of indoor thermal environments. The adaptive regression-based approach played an important role in raising awareness of adaptive capacities and paved the way towards first implementations into standardization. The adaptive heat balance approach combines the heat balance and the adaptive regression approaches and leads towards future improvements in adaptive comfort modelling. It demonstrates very good performance and its inclusive approach offers potential for further breakthroughs in reducing the limitations of the existing methods.

This paper investigates adaptive thermal comfort during summer in medical residences that are located in the French city of Troyes and managed by the Association of Parents of Disabled Children (APEI). Thermal comfort in these buildings is evaluated using subjective measurements and objective physical parameters. The thermal sensations of respondents were determined by questionnaires, while thermal comfort was estimated using the predicted mean vote (PMV) model. Indoor environmental parameters (relative humidity, mean radiant temperature, air temperature, and air velocity) were measured using a thermal environment sensor during the summer period in July and August 2018. A good correlation was found between operative temperature, mean radiant temperature, and PMV. The neutral temperature was determined by linear regression analysis of the operative temperature and Fanger’s PMV model. The obtained neutral temperature is 23.7 °C. Based on the datasets and questionnaires, the adaptive coefficient α representing patients’ capacity to adapt to heat was found to be 1.261. A strong correlation was also observed between the sequential thermal index n(t) and the adaptive temperature. Finally, a new empirical model of adaptive temperature was developed using the data collected from a longitudinal survey in four residential buildings of APEI in summer, and the obtained adaptive temperature is 25.0 °C with upper and lower limits of 24.7 °C and 25.4 °C.

Retrofitting heritage buildings for energy efficiency is not always easy where culturalvalues are highly concerned, which requires an integrated approach. This paper aims to assess thepotential of applying passive retrofitting scenarios to enhance indoor thermal comfort of heritagebuildings in North Africa, as a hot climate, a little attention has been paid to retrofit built heritagein that climate. A mixed-mode ventilation residential building in Cairo, Egypt, was selected asa case study. The study combines field measurements and observations with energy simulations.A simulation model was created and calibrated on the basis of monitored data in the referencebuilding, and the thermal comfort range was evaluated. Sets of passive retrofitting scenarios wereproposed. The results (based on the ASHRAE-55-2020 adaptive comfort model at 90% acceptabilitylimits) showed that the annual thermal comfort in the reference building is very low, i.e. 31.4%. Theapplication of hybrid passive retrofitting scenarios significantly impacts indoor thermal comfort inthe reference building, where annual comfort hours of up to 66% can be achieved. The originality ofthis work lies in identifying the most effective energy measures to improve indoor thermal comfortthat are optimal from a conservation point of view. The findings contribute to set a comprehensiveretrofitting tool that avoids potential risks for the conservation of residential heritage buildings inhot climates., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Recent studies underline that simple and non-invasive retrofit solutions can recover natural ventilation potential in existing buildings under temperate climate. Nonetheless, the efficiency of these solutions in dense urban contexts under hot and humid climate remains unclear. This paper aims to evaluate the thermal comfort gains caused by natural ventilation when retrofitting an office building in downtown Rio de Janeiro. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and thermal simulations are carried out on Ansys CFX and Design builder to assess indoor air flow before and after retrofit. The diagnosis of the current scenario indicates that the surrounding buildings block a significant part of the wind flow, and occupants experience only a few hours of thermal comfort during the year, especially on lower floors. To increase indoor air flow, the fixed upper windows were transformed into pivot windows and kept open permanently. This measure increases the annual hours of thermal comfort by 0.5-35%, depending on the floor and the adaptive comfort model. These findings suggest that natural ventilation itself may not be sufficient to ensure occupants' comfort throughout the year under the investigated context. Resumo Estudos recentes evidenciam que soluções arquitetônicas simples e não invasivas possibilitam recuperar o potencial de ventilação natural na reabilitação de edifícios em clima temperado. No entanto, a eficiência destas soluções em meios urbanos densos e clima quente e úmido ainda não foi investigada. Este artigo objetiva avaliar os benefícios para o conforto térmico decorrente da ventilação natural na reabilitação de um edifício de escritórios situado no centro do Rio de Janeiro. Simulações computacionais térmicas e fluidodinâmicas (CFD) são realizadas com os softwares Design builder e Ansys CFX para avaliar a circulação internas dos ventos antes e após reabilitação. O diagnóstico do cenário atual indica que o entorno bloqueia uma parcela significativa dos ventos, comprometendo o conforto térmico na maior parte do ano, sobretudo nos andares mais baixos. Para aumentar a vazão de ar interna, as bandeirolas fixas foram transformadas em janelas pivotantes e mantidas abertas permanentemente. Esta medida aumenta em 0,5-35% as horas anuais de conforto térmico, a depender do pavimento e do modelo de conforto adaptativo, o que indica que a ventilação natural por si só não é suficiente para garantir o conforto térmico dos usuários por todo o ano no contexto em questão.

Temperatures in Mediterranean cities are rising due to the effects of climate change, with a consequent increase in the heat waves frequency. Recent research has shown the tempering potential of semi-outdoor spaces such as courtyards, which are semi-enclosed spaces that are widely used by the users of buildings in Mediterranean cities. International standards addressing thermal comfort parameters provide technical guidelines for indoor spaces only. Expanding this concept, this paper focuses on the potential to extend and interpret the existing calculation models for indoor thermal comfort, EN 16798 and ASHRAE 55, to determine thermal comfort, monitoring two different courtyards in Cordoba, Spain, during both typical summer and heat wave periods. The results show that during the typical summer, the monitored courtyards can reach temperatures up to 8.4 °C cooler than outside. Subsequently can be considered to be in thermal comfort on average for 88% of the time according to EN 16798, and 75% according to ASHRAE 55, which drop to 71% and 52% respectively during heat wave (HW) periods, in spite of increasing thermal gap (TG) up to 13.9 °C. The results are also compared with the PET indicator used for evaluation of outdoor thermal comfort, which provides comparable figures: 81% summer and 73% HW. Implications of implementing passive shading strategies to increase comfort in these transition spaces are also evaluated. The research highlights the thermal potential and usefulness of courtyards in warm climates, so they can ultimately be included in the building analysis as a potentially comfortable and habitable space.

Adaptive thermal comfort guidelines have been developed within the work of Annex 69: “Strategy and practice of adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings”. The guidelines have been established based on a framework for adopting adaptive thermal comfort principles in building design and operation developed by the authors. The guidelines target building practitioners, addressing the critical interrelated role building planners, building operators and occupants play. A successful adaptive thermal comfort design, in which design for human thermal adaptation is foreseen, planned, and carefully embedded in the design and operation intent, is based on broad knowledge and understanding of the multiple quantifiable and non-quantifiable factors influencing human perception, as well as human building interaction. Adaptive building design follows a user-centric integrated design approach and therefore it is critical to consider the occupants’ and the operators’ role in buildings already in the design phase. This paper focuses on three main challenges identified earlier and how these are addressed in the guidelines, i.e. i) updating prevailing knowledge about human thermophysiology and adaptation, ii) developing a procedure for design of adaptive opportunities, and iii) providing guidance for operational planning and operation of adaptive buildings. The challenge for future research remains to assess the magnitude of how specific design decisions affect particular adaptive mechanisms.

Environmental thermal conditions decisively influence people’s performance, comfort, well-being and mood. In closed spaces, where people spend 80% of their time, thermal perception is a phenomenon studied from a multidisciplinary methodological approach. In Mexico, thermal comfort has been studied in isolation in different cities in the country, specifically at sites with warm, temperate or semi-cold bioclimate. The thermal estimates presented in this paper are the result of a thermal comfort study carried out during the cold period in the city of Ensenada, Baja California, which has a dry temperate bioclimate. The study was carried out from January 30th to March 3rd 2017 and consisted of the application of a questionnaire and the simultaneous recording of temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. The questionnaire was designed based on the subjective assessment scale suggested in ISO 10551 and ANSI/ASHRAE 55, while the instruments for measuring and recording environmental variables were selected and used based on ISO 7726. A database with 983 observations was created, and the data were processed using the Averages Intervals Thermal Sensation method. The thermal comfort range estimated for indoor spaces was 16.8 °C to 23.8 °C, with an ideal neutral temperature of 20.3 °C. The percentage of satisfaction vote with these results was 91%.

9th Mediterranean Conference of HVAC: Historical Buildings Retrofit in the Mediterranean Area, Climamed 2017; Matera; Italy; 12 May 2017 through 13 May 2017, Mosques differ from other types of buildings by having an intermittent operation schedule. Due to five prayer times per day throughout the year, mosques are fully or partially, yet periodically, occupied. This paper examines the potential of using an underfloor heating system for improvement of indoor thermal comfort in a historic mosque, which is naturally ventilated, heated and cooled, based on adaptive thermal comfort method. The selected Salepçioǧlu Mosque, housing valuable wall paintings, was built in 1905 in KemeraltI, Izmir, Turkey. It requires specific attention with its cultural heritage value. Firstly, indoor microclimate of the Mosque was monitored for one-year period of 2014-15. Then, dynamic simulation modelling tool, DesignBuilder v.4.2 was used to create the physical model of the Mosque. The ASHRAE Guideline 14 indices were utilized to calibrate the model, by comparing simulated and measured indoor air temperature to achieve hourly errors within defined ranges. The results of calibrated baseline model indicate that the Mosque does not satisfy acceptable thermal comfort levels for winter months that provided by the adaptive method. Then, the effect of underfloor heating was examined in the second model by the.

The design of low energy buildings requires accurate thermal simulation software to assess the heating and cooling loads. Such designs should sustain thermal comfort for occupants and promote less energy usage over the life time of any building. One of the house energy rating used in Australia is AccuRate, star rating tool to assess and compare the thermal performance of various buildings where the heating and cooling loads are calculated based on fixed operational temperatures between 20 °C to 25 °C to sustain thermal comfort for the occupants. However, these fixed settings for the time and temperatures considerably increase the heating and cooling loads. On the other hand the adaptive thermal model applies a broader range of weather conditions, interacts with the occupants and promotes low energy solutions to maintain thermal comfort. This can be achieved by natural ventilation (opening window/doors), suitable clothes, shading and low energy heating/cooling solutions for the occupied spaces (rooms). These activities will save significant amount of operating energy what can to be taken into account to predict energy consumption for a building. Most of the buildings thermal assessment tools depend on energy-based approaches to predict the thermal performance of any building e.g. AccuRate in Australia. This approach encourages the use of energy to maintain thermal comfort. This paper describes the advantages of a temperature-based approach to assess the building’s thermal performance (using an adaptive thermal comfort model) over energy based approach (AccuRate Software used in Australia). The temperature-based approach was validated and compared with the energy-based approach using four full scale housing test modules located in Newcastle, Australia (Cavity Brick (CB), Insulated Cavity Brick (InsCB), Insulated Brick Veneer (InsBV) and Insulated Reverse Brick Veneer (InsRBV)) subjected to a range of seasonal conditions in a moderate climate. The time required for heating and/or cooling using the adaptive thermal comfort approach and AccuRate predictions were estimated. Significant savings (of about 50 %) in energy consumption in minimising the time required for heating and cooling were achieved by using the adaptive thermal comfort model.

One of the major challenges of building industry today is to provide indoor spaces allowing the occupants to make themselves comfortable while achieving low energy consumption. Considering the observed increasing temperatures and a more extreme climate, this becomes even more urgent and difficult to accomplish. It is therefore necessary to rely on approaches than contribute to sustainable building design, such as the adaptive approach to thermal comfort which postulates that people are not passive recipients of their environment but adapt behaviourally, physiologically and psychologically. The concept of adaptive thermal comfort was formulated many decades ago and has been validated in numerous field studies. Temperature thresholds based on adaptive models have been included in international and national standards. However, the overall understanding of how to translate the adaptive principles into design practice and concepts for operating buildings is still limited. Subtask B of IEA Annex 69 addresses this gap: "Strategy and practice of adaptive thermal comfort in low energy buildings". The subtask aims to develop guidelines for low energy buildings that include the principle of adaptive comfort. This paper discusses the challenges and gaps identified in using the principles of adaptive thermal comfort in building design and operation and outlines the contents of the imminent guideline.

Despite studies on thermal comfort being consolidated in the scientific literature, people&rsquo, s well-being in some specific conditions and places, such as hospitals, requires to be further explored. The paper describes the methodological approach adopted to evaluate thermal comfort level and perception of pregnant women hosted in the obstetric ward of a test-bed case (Sant&rsquo, Orsola hospital in Bologna, Italy). The methodology adopts a mixed approach that compares the results of on-site monitoring by probe (as quantitative data) with the ones of a survey (questionnaire form) delivered to the involved subjects (as qualitative data) to understand if metabolic alteration may influence the pregnant women&rsquo, s perception of comfort conditions. The first follows ISO 7730, the second, ISO 10551. The comparison between the instrumental collected data and the outcomes of the survey revealed a wide gap between TSV (Thermal Sensation Vote) and PMVm (Predicted Mean Vote, measured on-site). The reason can be identified in the use of a standardized metabolic unit from ISO that does not correctly reflect the physiologic condition of pregnant women. Following a trial and error methodology, a met value for pregnant women is accordingly proposed. Moreover, an adaptive thermal comfort approach is adopted. This research is a first step towards the definition of specific thermal comfort in a hospital ward hosting pregnant women and more generally offers a reflection about the need to define specific met in the standards for some particular categories (children, elderly, pregnant women, etc.) when investigating thermal comfort.

Windows are central for the development of liveable nearly zero-energy homes and require careful consideration. Various studies have indicated that the effect of windows on energy consumption may change significantly with improved building insulation levels. Current guidelines on windows may therefore not apply in very well-insulated buildings, and more up-to-date information is needed about window solutions that are appropriate for the new conditions. This study maps the effect of multiple combinations of window size and basic glazing—and frame properties on energy, daylighting and thermal comfort in nearly zero-energy houses located in the European cities Rome and Copenhagen. The aim was to identify options that can support the easy and robust design of future homes with typical use of roof and facade windows. Hourly daylight levels were calculated in DAYSIM, while space heating demand and operative temperatures were calculated in EnergyPlus. The results support previous findings on the limited ability of nearly zero-energy buildings to utilise solar gains. It was found that U-values are becoming increasingly important for the energy performance of windows. The paper sketches the increased flexibility and related possibilities that may appear with improved roof window frame constructions and glazing U-values far lower than currently standard levels.

The paper presents a method of assessing the thermal performance of complete buildings using the adaptive thermal comfort concept. This facilitates the assessment of the thermal performance of whole building envelopes accounting for the percentage of time over which the building internal air temperature remains within a specified adaptive thermal comfort range. This method promotes sustainable and energy efficient design by using an adaptive approach to assess the thermal comfort for occupants instead of energy usage, the common practice in existing rating tools. This universal approach can be used to compare the thermal performances of various buildings and is applicable anywhere in the world. When the technique was applied to the assessment of the thermal performance of various walling types in several housing test modules over a 12 month period, the results indicated that the Insulated Cavity Brick module (InsCB) had the best building thermal performance, followed by the Insulated Reverse Brick Veneer (InsRBV), Insulated Brick Veneer (InsBV) and Cavity Brick modules (CB). These results were consistent with the previous findings from University of Newcastle (UON) research on walling systems and the AccuRate building assessment tool used in Australia.

A few features of building envelope that intensively affect summer internal microclimate in low energy building have been analyzed in presented paper. It was suggested to call those features “the passive means of protection against overheating”. Adaptive comfort method was used as a criterion of internal conditions evaluation. Dynamic thermal simulations of building model were conducted in EnergyPlus software. The main aim of this study, closely related to European Energy Directives, is to identify ways and means how to avoid mechanical cooling of building, connected with increased demand on energy, and in the same time to safeguard comfortable indoor climate. The basic conclusions regarding passive measures of protection against overheating have been presented.

Advances in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technologies have dramatically improved the indoor thermal environment, but attention should be paid on how this would affect building occupants' thermal comfort perception. In this paper, we studied the mutually dependent relationship between indoor climate experience and occupants' comfort expectation. An intriguing experiment was conducted in China where wintertime indoor thermal environments in northern cities (with district heating) are much warmer than in southern region (without district heating). By analyzing the 4411 responses from four college-aged subject groups with different indoor thermal history, two interesting findings emerged. Firstly, people's understandings of thermal comfort change with their indoor thermal experiences. Those permanently live in lower-grade non-neutral thermal environment can achieve similar thermal comfort perception as those who live in long-term comfortable thermal conditions. Secondly, the dynamics of building occupants' thermal comfort adaptation project asymmetric trajectories. It is much quicker for occupants to accept neutral indoor climate than to lower their expectation and adapt to under-conditioned environments. These two phenomena can be well described by the index “demand factor”, which can serve as a reference for future thermal comfort study.

The paper presents the development, implementation and performance investigation via simulations and experiments of a comfort-oriented control strategy for natural ventilation and mechanical air conditioning management of a mixed-mode building. The proposed comfort-oriented control strategy determines whether it would be possible to operate in natural ventilation mode or in mechanical heating/cooling. The control algorithm calculates first the optimal opening percentage of the windows according to adaptive thermal comfort criteria. If natural ventilation cannot guarantee the thermal comfort requirements and mechanical conditioning is required, the algorithm dynamically optimises the heating or cooling set-point targeting a defined Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index objective. The performance of the proposed controller was tested via simulations and experiments by using a residential mixed-mode building as a case study. The house features operable windows, a reverse-cycle ducted air conditioner and a comprehensive experimental control and monitoring infrastructure. A comparison with a baseline control strategy was performed to evaluate the comfort and energy performance improvement potential of the proposed control algorithm. The comfort-oriented controller was proven to outperform the baseline controller in terms of maintaining comfort in accordance with targets set by the current comfort standards, such as deviation from a PMV set-point or the middle of the adaptive thermal comfort band. The building energy consumption was also reduced in cooling dominated conditions. The experimental tests demonstrated that this logic can be integrated in an embedded controller, and its performance is in line with the expected one from the simulation results.

Numerous field studies conducted in different locations have found that peoples’ thermal comfort varies with local climate. However, little is understood about the effect of moving from one climate to another. Literature suggests that people would be able to adapt to the typical indoor climate in a new location, though estimated timescales for this process differ. This paper uses data from a 6-month field study to investigate the process of thermal adaptation to a new climate. The field study consisted of a series of four thermal comfort surveys conducted with 48 occupants of single occupancy residential accommodation units, which helped to estimate their preferred temperatures. The surveys were carried out between October 2015 and April 2016 in Southampton, UK, with high resolution indoor air temperature data collected for the periods between the surveys.Study participants were grouped into three categories: long term residents of the UK (Category A), recently moved to the UK from cold climates (Category An) and recently moved to the UK from warm climates (Category B). The higher indoor temperatures of participants from cool climates (Category An) indicates the influence of indoor thermal history in determining thermal comfort conditions in a new location. This is highlighted by the fact that 94% of Category An participants reported having heating in their previous residence compared to 17% of Category B participants. Analysis of comfort temperatures over the first 6 months of occupancy shows no indication that occupants from Category An or B are adapting their indoor preferences to match that of long term UK residents, given the choice to create their preferred environment. Finally, comparison of indoor air temperature and comfort temperature found a higher correlation in Category A participants which supports the key principles of adaptive comfort theory. Category An demonstrated fairly close correlation though air temperatures were higher than comfort temperatures which may be due to embedded heater use behaviour patterns. Category B demonstrated no correlation between comfort temperature and air temperature which may be due to unfamiliarity to indoor heating systems.

This paper focuses on thermal environmental conditions in the stone dwellings of a Tibetan village in Danba County, Sichuan, China, in winter. During the study, field measurements and subjective survey studies were collected, simultaneously, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the thermal comfort conditions that were experienced by residents in cold rural areas of Sichuan. Subjective surveys involved questions about thermal comfort perceptions and acceptability in cold conditions. The status of thermal comfort and characteristics of indoor environmental qualities were investigated in the study. The majority of survey participants (47% and 74%) voted as “slightly cool” for temperature, and “slightly dry” for humidity in the studied typical winter days, respectively. The available adaptive opportunities for the residents were investigated through the survey studies. Adjusting clothing, drinking hot beverages, blocking air infiltration through windows, and changing activities were the most common adaptive measures. An adaptive coefficient ( λ ) was determined based on adaptive predicted mean votes (aPMV) models using least square methods to assess the different adaptation measures in the region. Findings of this study provided a valuable reference for thermal comfort adaptations in cold climates, where limited adaptive opportunities were available due to the low standard of living.

Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems play a key role in shaping the built environment. However, centralized HVAC systems cannot guarantee the provision of a comfortable thermal environment for everyone. Therefore, a personalized HVAC system that aims to adapt thermal preferences has drawn much more attention. Meanwhile, occupant-related factors like skin temperature have not had standardized measurement methods. Therefore, this paper proposes to use infrared thermography to develop individual thermal models to predict thermal sensations using three different feature sets with the random forest (RF) and support vector machine (SVM). The results have shown the correlation coefficients between clothing surface temperature and thermal sensation are 11% and 3% higher than those between skin temperature and thermal sensation of two subjects, respectively. With cross-validation, SVM with a linear kernel and penalty number of 1, as well as RF with 50 trees and the maximum tree depth of 3 were selected as the model configurations. As a result, the model trained with the feature set, consisting of indoor air temperature, relative humidity, skin temperature and clothing surface temperature, and with linear kernel SVM has achieved 100% recall score on test data of female subjects and 95% recall score on that of male subjects.

© 2015 The Authors. India is witnessing unprecedented growth trends in building construction, particularly office spaces. Indian offices are designed to operate at 22.5 ± 1 °C all year round to meet the stringent "Class A" specifications outlined by international standards in the absence of an India-specific comfort standard. This paper proposes an India Model for Adaptive Comfort - IMAC - based on the field surveys administered in 16 buildings in three seasons and five cities, representative of five Indian climate zones. A total of 6330 responses were gathered from naturally ventilated, mixed mode and air-conditioned office buildings using instantaneous thermal comfort surveys.Occupants in naturally ventilated Indian offices were found to be more adaptive than the prevailing ASHRAE and EN models would suggest. According to the IMAC model, neutral temperature in naturally ventilated buildings varies from 19.6 to 28.5 °C for 30-day outdoor running mean air temperatures ranging from 12.5 to 31 °C. This is the first instance where a study proposes a single adaptive model for mixed mode buildings asserting its validity for both naturally ventilated and air-conditioned modes of operation in the building, with neutral temperature varying from 21.5 to 28.7 °C for 13-38.5 °C range of outdoor temperatures. For air-conditioned buildings, Fanger's static PMV model was found to consistently over-predict the sensation on the warmer side of the 7-point sensation scale.

Thermal comfort conditions in the built environment are strictly related not only to the thermal and geometric building features and to air-conditioning systems, but also to the building destination, to its using profile and to the biological-metabolic-psychological characteristics of users. As a consequence, there is a strong claim for new models, both subjective and adaptive to the environment, in a particular holistic vision of the problem, with regards to the novel tern user-plant-building system. In such a frame, through the paper the characterization of an algorithm aimed at subjective adaptive thermal comfort evaluations, enriching the one proposed by Fanger with an adaptive approach, is carried out using a Multi Agent System (MAS), based on Intelligent Agents, able to follow user’s needs and preferences in different contexts and expectations.

Thermal performance of low energy buildings depends not only on the thermal resistance of the building enclosure but also on the dynamic features of a building's components. Stationary heat flow is relatively well understood and easy to calculate, whereas dynamic characteristics are a complicated concept and are always connected with more advanced computational tools. The commonly used harmonic model of non-stationary heat transfer is usually based on a 24-hour period, however, in real-life conditions the building's response to longer heat waves is also important. The dynamic features of selected materials and of the building's enclosure in transient environmental conditions are calculated and discussed in this paper. The influence of decisions concerning the selection of materials and thickness on internal conditions is discussed, and design decisions to ensure appropriate microclimate control are presented.

The effect of increasing RUSUNAMI high-rise and low cost building flats construction has brought about some problems. One of them is the use of air conditioning in many building flats. It shows that the objective of the RUSUNAMI is not fulfilled because it needs additional operational cost for air conditioning. Two RUSUNAMIs in Bandung and three RUSUNAMIs in Jakarta were selected and measured related to ventilation and indoor air temperature. This paper examines the performance of natural ventilation and indoor air temperature and their ability in thermal comfort with the adaptive approach. In general, all RUSUNAMI is not effective in utilizing the wind because it is designed for air conditioning. On this occasion, it is discussed the opportunities of natural ventilation associated with utilization approach of adaptive thermal comfort.