The purpose of this study was to determine the thermal comfort requirements for steps in temperature. Thirty male subjects were exposed for 50 min to a 34 or 37 degrees C condition, and then quickly transferred to a cooler environment of 31, 28, 25, and 22 degrees C for 50 min. Mean skin temperature was continuously measured, and the subjects reported their thermal sensation and comfort sensati...

A data-driven approach for the optimization of a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system in an office building is presented. A neural network (NN) algorithm is used to build a predictive model since it outperformed five other algorithms investigated in this paper. The NN-derived predictive model is then optimized with a strength multi-objective particle-swarm optimization (S-MO...

Field experiments, conducted in 29 air-conditioned offices, used survey questionnaires and physical measurements to investigate workers’ subjective thermal responses and comfort perception. A total of 650 individuals participated in the field study. The thermal neutrality and thermal preference of subjects occurred at 25.6°C and 24.1°C respectively. Responses from those subjects suggest a comfo...

Thermal comfort is a very vague and a very individual term, which depends on physiological and psychological variables. Thermal comfort in transient environments, like an automotive cabin, is far from understood and general accepted theories do not yet exist. This paper investigates the concept of using a black-box approach for directly associating thermal comfort to field measurements. Artific...

In this paper we report the results of coupled DOE-2 and 3D transient computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for an unconditioned 100-year-old Buddhist temple, located in an urban area of Bangkok, Thailand. The HEATX CFD code was combined with the DOE-2 thermal simulation program, to analyze the heat transfer and airflow performance of the building. The indoor temperatures simulated by ...

Regional activation of the brain was studied in humans using functional magnetic resonance imaging during whole body cooling that produced thermal comfort/discomfort. Eight normal male subjects lay in a sleeping bag through which air was blown, exposing subjects to cold air (88C) for 22 min. Each subject scored their degree of thermal comfort and discomfort every min. As the subjects reported m...

the universal thermal climate index (utci) addresses these shortcomings by using an advanced thermo-physiological model. the aim of this study was to investigate and prepare zoning of thermal comfort condition using utci. meteorological data including temperature, wind speed, cloudiness and relative humidity were obtained on a daily time scale from 10 synoptic stations during (2004-2013) period...

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