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Against the background of climate protection and the rising costs of a fossil-fuel-based energy supply, the interest in the energy performance and indoor climate of buildings in real operation is rising. This paper, therefore, deals with the indoor climate investigation of two medium-sized office buildings in Germany by taking measurements over a whole year. These relate to one new building and one refurbished building. Sensors of various types were installed and operated in a large number of office rooms, so that in total results are available for over 100 rooms, typically occupied by one or two persons. The analysis focuses on the indoor temperature in summer and the air quality in winter based on the CO2 concentration. The comfort classes according to DIN EN 16798 including the adaptive comfort approach are used as a basis to cluster the results. Both buildings have movable sun protection and openable windows but no facilities for active cooling. They, thus, represent a large number of existing 'low tech' office buildings in Germany and central Europe. The results reflect the respective building concepts but also show a wide range between the rooms due to the user preferences and behaviour. The refurbished building shows better results, especially in terms of air quality but also in terms of summer room temperatures. This underlines the benefit of the targeted measures as a result of an analysis of the deficits in the existing building before the refurbishment. The additional measures for decentralised mechanical ventilation and passive cooling are having positive effects. As part of the projects, further measures to improve the indoor climate were investigated in both buildings. In one case, this involved CO2 traffic lights to stimulate personal window ventilation in winter, and in the other, the use of newly developed individual ceiling fans supports convective heat dissipation on the human body during hot spells in summer. The positive effect could be demonstrated for both measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceiling fans allow an increase of the local air velocity on the human body. The associated heat transfer increases user's temperature tolerance in warm environments. In the presented study, the differences in the application of statistical turbulence models (RANS) for modelling the air flow induced by a ceiling integrated fan is outlined with particular focus on comparing steady and transient simulations. Results of a CFD simulation (Fluent) are shown and compared with measured data of the horizontal velocity distribution. The study shows that especially the transient simulation using the Realizable k‐ε model shows a stable convergence behaviour regarding the residuals as well as target values. But at 1.1 m above the floor, the mean absolute error of the transient simulation is larger compared to the stationary model using the Multiple Reference Frame (MRF) approach. Despite the stationary model produces an unrealistic velocity distribution in the immediate vicinity of the fan, if the moving zone needs to be small due to obstacles. For a freely suspended ceiling fan, the moving zone can be adjusted accordingly and the flow pattern can be improved. But modelling a ceiling integrated fan with a fan housing and obstacles in the near region, transient simulations using rigid body motion are required for accurate results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]