THERMAL COMFORT PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A VENTILATIVE COOLING SYSTEM IN A LOW ENERGY BUILDING RETROFIT
Summary
Levels of thermal discomfort in modern energy efficient buildings are often underestimated in the cooling seasons. The reason for this is in part due to the use of passive solutions and supporting standards in the design of... [ view full abstract ]
Levels of thermal discomfort in modern energy efficient buildings are often underestimated in the cooling seasons. The reason for this is in part due to the use of passive solutions and supporting standards in the design of new buildings and building retrofits. To provide a high level of thermal comfort in these buildings is a major challenge when using natural ventilation only. This paper presents the findings from a thermal comfort study assessing the performance of a ventilative cooling system, in a retrofitted low energy building. The field study involved the overheating of a control space and assessed the thermal comfort performance of four ventilation configurations, where no ventilation was present in one configuration. The performance of each configuration was evaluated subjectively by analysing the responses of 35 participants and objectively through the calculation of the operative temperature, PMV and PPD thermal comfort indices. The results from both these evaluations were categorised using ISO 7730 and then the subjective and objective results were compared. Results indicate the PMV model over predicting neutral thermal responses throughout the study by 53%. The configuration in Test 2 was considered the best configuration when taking into account both subjective and objective approaches (PMV = 0.40, 0.01), (Category B, A). All ventilation configurations were unable to achieve the highest level of thermal comfort from a subjective perspective. Further work in explaining the differences between the subjective and objective results needs to be carried out.
Authors
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Adam O' Donovan
(Cork Institute of Technology)
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Antoine Saint Omer
(Institut Catholique d'Arts et Métiers)
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Guillaume Serafin
(University of La Rochelle)
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Paul O' Sullivan
(Cork Institute of Technology)
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Michael D. Murphy
(Cork Institute of Technology)
Topic Area
Energy & Resource Management
Session
Session 2C » Session 2C: Energy (14:00 - Friday, 4th September, Lecture Theatre 2014)
Paper
AOD_IMC_32_FD_6.3.pdf