Measuring Indoor Air Distributions

14 Indoor air distributions, such as the distributions of air temperature, air velocity, and 15 contaminant concentrations, are very important to occupants’ health and comfort in 16 enclosed spaces. When point data is collected for interpolation to form field 17 distributions, the sampling locations (the locations of the point sensors) have a 18 significant effect on time invested, labor costs and measuring accuracy on field 19 interpolation. This investigation compared two different sampling methods: the grid 20 method and the gradient-based method, for determining sampling locations. The two 21 methods were applied to obtain point air parameter data in an office room and in a 22 section of an economy-class aircraft cabin. The point data obtained was then 23 interpolated to form field distributions by the ordinary Kriging method. Our error 24 analysis shows that the gradient-based sampling method has 32.6% smaller error of 25 interpolation than the grid sampling method. We acquired the function between the 26 interpolation errors and the sampling size (the number of sampling points). According 27 to the function, the sampling size has an optimal value and the maximum sampling 28 size can be determined by the sensor and system errors. This study recommends the 29 gradient-based sampling method for measuring indoor air distributions. 30