Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy
01 Jan 1992-Vol. 5
About: The article was published on 1992-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 5855 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Occupancy.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduced the most recent advances and current obstacles in modeling occupant behavior and quantifying its impact on building energy use, including advancements in data collection techniques, analytical and modeling methods, and simulation applications which provide insights into behavior energy savings potential and impact.
401 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used reference models representing standard HVAC and building design practice to simulate the impact of the thermostat setpoint ranges on the annual energy consumption of office buildings.
400 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a discrete model-based predictive control methodology is applied, consisting of three major components: the predictive models, implemented by radial basis function neural networks identified by means of a multi-objective genetic algorithm; the cost function that will be optimised to minimise energy consumption and maintain thermal comfort; and the optimisation method, a discrete branch and bound approach.
397 citations
TL;DR: A literature review of major changes, developments, and trends in the field of thermal comfort research over the last 20 years suggests that the demand for ever increasing building energy efficiency is pushing technological innovation in the way the authors deliver comfortable indoor environments.
Abstract: Climate change and the urgency of decarbonizing the built environment are driving technological innovation in the way we deliver thermal comfort to occupants. These changes, in turn, seem to be setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research. This article presents a literature review of major changes, developments, and trends in the field of thermal comfort research over the last 20 years. One of the main paradigm shift was the fundamental conceptual reorientation that has taken place in thermal comfort thinking over the last 20 years; a shift away from the physically based determinism of Fanger's comfort model toward the mainstream and acceptance of the adaptive comfort model. Another noticeable shift has been from the undesirable toward the desirable qualities of air movement. Additionally, sophisticated models covering the physics and physiology of the human body were developed, driven by the continuous challenge to model thermal comfort at the same anatomical resolution and to combine these localized signals into a coherent, global thermal perception. Finally, the demand for ever increasing building energy efficiency is pushing technological innovation in the way we deliver comfortable indoor environments. These trends, in turn, continue setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research for the next decades.
369 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The authors conducted a field study in a naturally ventilated building where occupants had varying degrees of control over the windows and found that occupants with different degrees of personal control had significantly diverse thermal responses, even when they experienced the same thermal environments and clothing and activity levels.
Abstract: Past research (ASHRAE RP-884) demonstrated that occupants of naturally ventilated buildings are comfortable in a wider range of temperatures than occupants of buildings with centrally controlled HVAC systems. However, the exact influence of personal control in explaining these differences could only be hypothesized because of the limits of the existing field study data that formed the basis of that research. The objective of ASHRAE RP-1161 was to quantitatively investigate how personal control of operable windows in office settings influences local thermal conditions and occupant comfort. We conducted a field study in a naturally ventilated building where occupants had varying degrees of control over the windows. Utilizing continuous measurement of each subject’s workstation microclimate, plus a Web-based survey that subjects took several times a day and was cross-linked to concurrent physical assessments of workstation microclimatic conditions, we collected over 1000 survey responses in each of the two main seasons. The data show that occupants with different degrees of personal control had significantly diverse thermal responses, even when they experienced the same thermal environments and clothing and activity levels. Our findings offer further empirical support for the role of shifting expectations in the adaptive model of thermal comfort.
369 citations