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The influence of dissimilar cooling and ventilation system combinations on indoor environmental quality (IEQ) has been studied. A comparison of chilled ceiling cooling in combination with displacement ventilation, cooling with fan coil unit, and cooling with flat wall displacement inlets was performed. All observed variations were evaluated based on whole-body and local thermal comfort criteria as well as with regard to ventilation effectiveness. The analysis was made based on results of numerical simulations carried out in two steps. First, DesignBuilder was applied to model the buildings’ thermal performance and to evaluate its interaction with the environment. The latter included the calculation of heat gains as well as the heat loss on the boundary surfaces of the observed air-conditioned room. In the second step, ANSYS Fluent was used to simulate the response of indoor environment by utilizing the simulation results obtained in the first step, in order to evaluate the interaction between building and human. Afterwards, the observed thermal comfort and ventilation criteria were merged into a novel indoor environment indicator, which enables to describe the indoor environment quality with a single value. Among the analysed systems, the ceiling cooling system in combination with displacement ventilation was found to be the most suitable as it offers a high level of thermal comfort with adequate ventilation efficiency. Fan coil cooling was the least favourable option in terms of thermal comfort, while flat wall displacement inlets exhibited the lowest ventilation effectiveness. The performed investigation demonstrated the necessity to assess indoor environment with regard to IEQ in addition to energy consumption.

In ventilated and air-conditioned indoor environment, air movement substantially impacts thermal sensation and comfort of occupants from the point of view of whole body and local thermal sensation. Skin temperature and its rate of change are important factors for thermal sensation. Both are affected by the airflow velocity and temperature changes around the body which causes skin temperature fluctuations and changes in convective heat transfer. In this study the impact of temperature fluctuations in airflow on human thermal sensation was examined. For the purposes of the study, an air handling unit was designed for generating airflows with temperature fluctuations and used in a subjective experiment. The experimental study indicates that temperature fluctuations possibly influence the human perception of air movement with a distinct cooling effect.