Understanding thermal comfort in vernacular dwellings in Alentejo, Portugal: A mixed-methods adaptive comfort approach

Adaptive Thermal Comfort and Ventilation

Thermal comfort assessment in comfort-prone workplaces.

This paper's main issue is a strong advocacy in favour of an a priori classification of thermal environments that can be really functional to comfort assessment: Class 1, environments where comfort conditions can be established (comfort-prone environments), and Class 2, environments where this is not practically feasible. The former, which are also identified here as 'thermally unconstrained' e...

Model-adaptive Analysis of Indoor Thermal Comfort

We address the model-adaptive coupling between computational codes for indoor thermal comfort analysis considering different levels of detail in space and time. Starting with a whole-year simulation, significant periods are interactively identified in terms of a coarse thermal comfort analysis. After refining these critical intervals with respect to the spatial resolution, a multi-segment manik...

Ecosystem Biomimicry: A way to achieve thermal comfort in architecture

The strategies to reduce the consumption of non-renewable energies in buildings are becoming increasingly important. In the meantime, nature-inspired approaches have emerged as a new strategy to achieve thermal comfort in the interiors. However, the use of these approaches in architecture and buildings requires a proper understanding regarding the features of ecosystems. Although acquiring this...

Thermal Comfort in Transition Spaces

Resource depletion and global warming dictate needs to reduce energy consumption, however energy used for the environmental space conditioning of buildings remains substantial; even in well-designed examples. Therefore the ways in which buildings are utilized, and occupant expectations of comfort in building environments should be researched to determine alternative means for optimizing perform...