Abstract
The present research deals with the necessity of improving the way in which the feedback between building and occupants is considered in building thermal simulation with the goal of performing reliable predictions that support the creation of buildings that consume less energy and provide a more comfortable and healthier indoor environment; the creation of sustainable buildings. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the discipline of thermal comfort, including a description of the parameters that define it, the most common thermal comfort models, and a review of the most frequently used simulation methodologies in the built environment, both in commercial tools and in research work. This chapter also underlines the range of application and limitations of each of these models and methodologies, serving as a basis for the definition of the methodologies introduced in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 is dedicated to the personal adaptation strategies to the indoor thermal environment that building occupants perform with the goal of restore thermal comfort in the presence of unpleasant stimuli. In particular, this chapter deals with clothing adaptation for being both usually conducted and very effective. It has been observed in field surveys that people select their clothing every morning before leaving their home according to the outdoor environmental conditions and that, in addition to that, small clothing changes frequently occur throughout the day in the indoor environment. However, in the standard procedure of thermal comfort simulations, clothing insulation is frequently considered constant throughout whole seasons. Some authors have tried to address the changes in clothing insulation with models, but these have been dedicated to the day-to-day clothing changes exclusively. In this chapter, along with the existing methodologies to consider daily clothing adaptation, several additional methods are proposed to contemplate the small adjustments that occur during the day in order to evaluate the way in which they affect thermal comfort simulation results and the sensitivity of building categorization according to international Standards ISO 7730 and EN 16798 to this type of adaptation. The results are calculated in the long term and for multiple points equally distributed within a standard open office space. Personal adaptation strategies are especially relevant when the effect of solar radiation that falls into the occupants is considered in the simulations, since its effect changes position and intensity throughout the day and it is capable of producing a sudden and considerable increase in the mean radiant temperature perceived by subjects. That is why in this chapter, the effect of the direct and indirect short-wave solar radiation landing on occupants is included in the mean radiant temperature component of the Fanger model. The contribution of solar radiation to comfort has been studied by several authors and its effect has been integrated into different calculation methodologies, all of them based on the use of the steady-state Fanger comfort model. Chapter 3 explores in greater detail the fact that, due to its changing nature, solar radiation has a dynamic effect on people's comfort and, consequently, dynamic comfort models are candidates to evaluate their effect on comfort more accurately. In this chapter, the contribution of the short-wave solar radiation entering through the windows and falling into the building occupants is integrated into three different dynamic thermal sensation models (indices) –i.e. Pierce (TSENS), Takada (TSV) and Fiala (DTS). Additionally, in order to improve the accuracy of the mean radiant temperature adjustment, apart from considering the beam and indirect components of the solar radiation as in chapter 2, the effect of the ground-reflected component of the solar radiation is also considered here. The goals are to evaluate the consistency of the different dynamic thermal comfort models in the analysis of sunirradiated indoor environments and to determine the degree to which they differ from the steady-state Fanger model. The Pierce thermophysiological model is used to calculate the parameters required by the dynamic thermal sensation models while maintaining an acceptable computational intensity. Comfort is analyzed in different positions and during a whole year in 12 variations (i.e. the combinations of two window sizes, two orientations, and three localities) of the open office space used also in chapter 2.