In-situ real time measurements of thermal comfort and comparison with the adaptive comfort theory in Dutch residential dwellings

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIndoor thermal comfort is generally assessed using the PMV or the adaptive model. This research presents the results obtained by in-situ real time measurements of thermal comfort and thermal comfort perception in 17 residential dwellings in the Netherlands. The study demonstrates the new possibilities offered by relatively cheap, sensor-rich environments to collect data on clothing, heating, and activities related to thermal comfort, which can be used to improve and validate existing comfort models. The results are analysed against the adaptive comfort model and its underlying assumptions. Data analysis showed that while indoor temperatures are within the adaptive model's comfort bandwidth, occupants often reported comfort sensations other than neutral. Furthermore, when indoor temperatures were below the comfort bandwidth, tenants also often reported that they felt 'neutral'. The adaptive model could overestimate as well as underestimate the occupant's adaptive capacity towards thermal comfort. Despite the significant outdoors temperature variation, the indoor temperature of the dwellings and the clothing were observed to remain largely constant. Certain actions towards thermal comfort such as 'turning the thermostat up' were taking place while tenants were reporting thermal sensation 'neutral' or 'a bit warm'. This indicates that either there is an indiscrimination among the various thermal sensation levels or alliesthesia plays a role and the neutral sensation is not comfortable, or many actions are happening out of habit and not in order to improve one's thermal comfort. A chi 2 analysis showed that only six actions were correlated to thermal sensation in thermally poorly efficient dwellings, and six in thermally efficient dwellings.

From BIM to digital twins: a systematic review of the evolution of intelligent building representations in the AEC-FM industry

“…Table 4 summarizes the overview of the studies in Level 3 with different research domains. Nakama et al 2015, Riaz et al 2015, Tomasi et al 2015, Pasini et al 2016, Suprabhas and Dib 2017, Kang et al 2018, Sava et al 2018, Zhong et al 2018, Atazadeh et al 2019, Ignatov and Gade 2019, Rashid et al 2019, Zhao et al 2019 Indoor Thermal Comfort Chang et al 2018, Ioannou et al 2018, Pasini 2018 Space Management Fang et al 2016, Teizer et al 2017, Ferreira et al 2018, Gong et al 2018, Ha et al 2018, Asadi et al 2019, Mahmood et al 2020 Hazards…”

“…Chang et al (2018) developed a framework using Dynamo to transform real-time sensing data from Arduino Microcontroller to Autodesk Revit, to achieve colorful visualization of indoor temperature and humidity as well as thermal comfort in BIM models, similar to the platform developed by Pasini (2018). However, Ioannou et al (2018) evaluated the adaptive thermal comfort model by comparing the estimated thermal comfort values quantitatively and qualitatively using real-time indoor temperature, relative humidity, metabolic rate, and clothing, which indicated that the adaptive thermal comfort model would overestimate or underestimate the results.…”

Selected Aspects of Indoor Climate in a Passive Office Building with a Thermally Activated Building System: A Case Study from Poland

“…Its instantaneous measured values differed from mean air temperature and mean floor temperature from −0.85 °C to 0.92 °C and from −3.90 °C to 2.48 °C, respectively. Regarding comments presented in [64,[90][91][92] operative temperature was calculated as average of air and radiant components [93,94].…”

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“…make part of factors' list that need to be taken in consideration. However, since all possible factors may vary in time and depend on different situations of workers, we decided to base our standard of occupants performance productivity, in this study, on the ASHRAE Standard 55, like in [2,3,8,9,10]. The ASHRAE determine a seven-point thermal scale (3= cold, -2 = cool, -1 = slightly cool, 0= neutral, 1= slightly warm, 2= warm, 3= hot).…”