The aim of this research is to investigate the application and performance of an advanced personal comfort system, a thermal chair, using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Building Energy Simulation (BES) and field test analysis. The thermal chair permits individual control over their immediate thermal environment without affecting the thermal environment and comfort of other occupants. A comprehensive review on the existing research on the design and performance of various personalised thermal control systems was carried out. A prototype of a thermal chair was designed for the study and tested in an open plan office during the heating season in Leeds, UK. 45 individuals used the chair in their everyday context of work and a survey questionnaire was applied to record their views of the thermal environment before and after using the chair. The performance of the chair was investigated through CFD simulations (ANSYS Fluent) providing a detailed analysis of the thermal distribution around a thermal chair with a manikin. Furthermore, a model of a three-story office building with thermal chairs were created and simulated in the commercial BES software, IES Virtual Environment. The benchmark model of the building was validated with previous work and good agreement was observed. The results showed that user thermal comfort can be enhanced by improving the local thermal comfort of the occupant. The additional plug-load energy from the thermal chair was significantly less as compared to the heating energy saved by adjusting the heating set point by 2ºC during the heating season. Monthly heating energy demand was reduced by 27% on January and 25.4% on February. Furthermore, the results of the field study revealed 20% higher comfort and 35% higher satisfaction level, due to the use of thermal chair.

No abstract

Abstract:Global demand for energy continues to increase rapidly, due to economic and population growth, especially for increasing market economies. These lead to challenges and worries about energy security that can increase as more users need more energy resources. Also, higher consumption of fossil fuels leads to more greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. Moreover, there are still more people without access to electricity. Several studies have reported that one of the rapidly developing source of power is wind energy and with declining costs due to technology and manufacturing advancements and concerns over energy security and environmental issues, the trend is predicted to continue. As a result, tools and methods to simulate and optimize wind energy technologies must also continue to advance. This paper reviews the most recently published works in Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations of micro to small wind turbines, building integrated with wind turbines, and wind turbines installed in wind farms. In addition, the existing limitations and complications included with the wind energy system modelling were examined and issues that needs further work are highlighted. This study investigated the current development of CFD modelling of wind energy systems. Studies on aerodynamic interaction among the atmospheric boundary layer or wind farm terrain and the turbine rotor and their wakes were investigated. Furthermore, CFD combined with other tools such as blade element momentum were examined. Keywords:Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD); micro to small wind turbine; building integrated with wind turbine; wind farm; aerodynamic interaction; wind energy systems; atmospheric boundary layer (ABL); blade element momentum (BEM)

This study aims to improve user comfort and heaters, which are about 1-1.5kW. Further research is recommended to improve the design and application of the thermal chair to improve user overall thermal comfort and also further reduce energy consumption.

No abstract