scholarly journals The effects of building layouts and envelope on indoor thermal environment of Hui style traditional buildings in Wuyuan

2020 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 05013
Author(s):  
Xiaowei Hong ◽  
Guangjin Zhang ◽  
Yufeng Zhang

Indoor thermal environment of Hui style traditional houses is depended on surrounding environments, building layouts and envelope. Quantitative analysis of the effects of building layouts and envelope on indoor thermal environment is of great significance for preventions of traditional houses and design of new archaized houses. A field investigation was conducted on thirty-six traditional houses from nine villages in Wuyuan, and the typical buildings’ layout and envelope were determined. Four traditional buildings in different location in Wuyuan were selected for continual recording. The four buildings with four types of building layouts and envelope were analyzed by using local adaptive thermal comfort model, and the effects of building layouts and envelope of traditional buildings were clearly revealed. The most crucial way to improve indoor thermal environment in Hui style traditional buildings was raising the indoor air temperature.

2020 ◽  
pp. 014459872096921
Author(s):  
Yanru Li ◽  
Enshen Long ◽  
Lili Zhang ◽  
Xiangyu Dong ◽  
Suo Wang

In the Yangtze River zone of China, the heating operation in buildings is mainly part-time and part-space, which could affect the indoor thermal comfort while making the thermal process of building envelope different. This paper proposed to integrate phase change material (PCM) to building walls to increase the indoor thermal comfort and attenuate the temperature fluctuations during intermittent heating. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of this kind of composite phase change wall (composite-PCW) on the indoor thermal environment and energy consumption of intermittent heating, and further develop an optimization strategy of intermittent heating operation by using EnergyPlus simulation. Results show that the indoor air temperature of the building with the composite-PCW was 2–3°C higher than the building with the reference wall (normal foamed concrete wall) during the heating-off process. Moreover, the indoor air temperature was higher than 18°C and the mean radiation temperature was above 20°C in the first 1 h after stopping heating. Under the optimized operation condition of turning off the heating device 1 h in advance, the heat release process of the composite-PCW to the indoor environment could maintain the indoor thermal environment within the comfortable range effectively. The composite-PCW could decrease 4.74% of the yearly heating energy consumption compared with the reference wall. The optimization described can provide useful information and guidance for the energy saving of intermittently heated buildings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 8565
Author(s):  
Jinzhe Nie ◽  
Yuxin Pang ◽  
Congcong Wang ◽  
Han Zhang ◽  
Kuichao Yin

In the field investigation of rural dwellings, it was found that thermal feelings are significantly different with varied envelopes even under the same indoor air temperature, and this paper explores the phenomenon in simulation. Based on building thermal investigations in several villages of North China, a typical energy and environment simulation model for rural residences was developed using DeST, and the hourly parameters of temperature and humidity were used to calculate the adaptive thermal comfort (APMV) of the rooms. The results show that the main reason for the different thermal comfort at the same air temperature is the large difference in the inner surface temperature. By adjusting the insulation thickness of the envelope structure, the relationship between it and the APMV value is obtained. By adjusting the insulation thickness of the enclosure structure and getting the correlation between it and the APMV value, it is obtained that when the heat transfer coefficient of the enclosure structure meets 0.5 W/ (m2−K), the indoors can be in thermal comfort. This paper considers that the indoor air temperature cannot represent the APMV to evaluate the indoor thermal comfort, and the APMV value should be used to evaluate the thermal comfort of the renovated building and calculate the corresponding energy saving rate.


2013 ◽  
Vol 805-806 ◽  
pp. 1620-1624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wan Ying Qu

A thermal comfort field study was investigated in residential buildings of cold regions in transition season during which the indoor thermal environment conditions are measured, the thermal sensation value of the occupants is questioned and recorded. A seven-point thermal sensation scale was used to evaluate the thermal sensation. The statistical method was used to analyze the data and the conclusions are as follows in transition season: clothing increase in 0.1clo when the indoor air temperature is lowered by 1°C; and clothing will be a corresponding increase in 0.06clo when the outdoor air temperature is lowered by 1°C; clothing also varies with gender, age, weight and thermal history and other related; the measured thermal neutral temperature is 21.3°C; and the minimum accepted temperature is 11.4 °C in transition season in cold regions. Most people choose to change clothes, switch and other passive measures, and occasionally take active measures of heater, electric fans and others.


Buildings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajan KC ◽  
Hom Rijal ◽  
Masanori Shukuya ◽  
Kazui Yoshida

A home energy management system (HEMS) shows the energy used indoors so that the energy waste can be easily identified and reduced. Thermal comfort is related to the trend of energy use in buildings. We conducted a survey in a condominium equipped with a HEMS to determine the indoor thermal environment and various behaviors of the occupants taken for thermal comfort adjustment. The results showed that there is a large variation of indoor air temperatures according to season, floor and flat. We categorized families into two groups, one with higher and the other with lower average indoor temperatures. The indoor air temperature of the higher temperature group in summer was found to be higher than the recommended indoor temperature during the summer season in Japan. The higher temperature group tended to adopt behaviors, such as window opening and using a fan more often, than the lower temperature group. Due to the moderately high insulating levels in the building surveyed, the indoor air temperature of both groups was not low in winter. Heating was used less and irregular. The overall results indicate that the groups of families behaved differently to adjust the indoor thermal environment even though they were equipped with the same HEMS system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-299
Author(s):  
Hom B Rijal ◽  
Michael A Humphreys ◽  
J Fergus Nicol

Office workers use a variety of adaptive opportunities to regulate their indoor thermal environment. The behavioural adaptations such as window opening, clothing adjustments, heating/cooling use are one of the important factors for the adaptive thermal comfort. It is well-known that they are the most important contributors in the adaptive thermal comfort model. Thus, if we understand the behavioural adaptation properly, we can explain the mechanism of the adaptive model. In addition, the indoor thermal environment is often adjusted using the air conditioning in Japanese office building to improve the thermal comfort and productivity. Thus, it is necessary to conduct research on the behavioural adaptation in the offices because the occupant behavior is different to the dwellings. In order to record the seasonal differences in behavioural adaptation and to develop an adaptive algorithm for Japanese offices, we measured temperatures in 11 office buildings and conducted the thermal comfort and occupant behaviour survey for over a year in Japanese offices. We collected 4,660 samples from about 1350 people. The proportion of ‘open window’ in the free running mode (neither heating or cooling being used) is significantly higher than that of the air-conditioned mode. The behavioural adaptation is related to the outdoor air temperature. The behavioural adaptation predicted by the regression analysis is in good agreement with the measured data. These findings can be applied to the building thermal simulation to predict the behavioural adaptation and energy use in office buildings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3614
Author(s):  
Zeyad Amin Al-Absi ◽  
Mohd Isa Mohd Hafizal ◽  
Mazran Ismail ◽  
Azhar Ghazali

Building sector is associated with high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to climate change. Sustainable development emphasizes any actions to reduce climate change and its effect. In Malaysia, half of the energy utilized in buildings goes towards building cooling. Thermal comfort studies and adaptive thermal comfort models reflect the high comfort temperatures for Malaysians in naturally conditioned buildings, which make it possible to tackle the difference between buildings’ indoor temperature and the required comfort temperature by using proper passive measures. This study investigates the effectiveness of building’s retrofitting with phase change materials (PCMs) as a passive cooling technology to improve the indoor thermal environment for more comfortable conditions. PCM sheets were numerically investigated below the internal finishing of the walls. The investigation involved an optimization study for the PCMs transition temperatures and quantities. The results showed significant improvement in the indoor thermal environment, especially when using lower transition temperatures and higher quantities of PCMs. Therefore, the monthly thermal discomfort time has decreased completely, while the thermal comfort time has increased to as high as 98%. The PCM was effective year-round and the optimum performance for the investigated conditions was achieved when using 18mm layer of PCM27-26.


Technologies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Siliang Lu ◽  
Erica Cochran Hameen

Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems play a key role in shaping office environments. However, open-plan office buildings nowadays are also faced with problems like unnecessary energy waste and an unsatisfactory shared indoor thermal environment. Therefore, it is significant to develop a new paradigm of an HVAC system framework so that everyone could work under their preferred thermal environment and the system can achieve higher energy efficiency such as task ambient conditioning system (TAC). However, current task conditioning systems are not responsive to personal thermal comfort dynamically. Hence, this research aims to develop a dynamic task conditioning system featuring personal thermal comfort models with machine learning and the wireless non-intrusive sensing system. In order to evaluate the proposed task conditioning system performance, a field study was conducted in a shared office space in Shanghai from July to August. As a result, personal thermal comfort models with indoor air temperature, relative humidity and cheek (side face) skin temperature have better performances than baseline models with indoor air temperature only. Moreover, compared to personal thermal satisfaction predictions, 90% of subjects have better performances in thermal sensation predictions. Therefore, personal thermal comfort models could be further implemented into the task conditioning control of TAC systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Rajan KC ◽  
Hom Bahadur Rijal ◽  
Masanori Shukuya ◽  
Kazui Yoshida

The energy use in residential dwellings has been increasing due to increasing use of modern electric appliances to make the lifestyle easier, entertaining and better. One of the major purposes of indoor energy use is for improving indoor thermal environment for adjusting thermal comfort. Along with the use of passive means like the use of mechanical devices, the occupants in any dwellings use active means such as the use of natural ventilation, window opening, and clothing adjustment. In fact, the use of active means when the outdoor environment is good enough might be more suitable to improve indoor thermal environment than the use of mechanical air conditioning units, which necessarily require electricity. Therefore, the people in developing countries like Nepal need to understand to what extent the occupants can use active means to manage their own indoor thermal comfort. The use of active means during good outdoor environment might be an effective way to manage increasing energy demand in the future. We have made a field survey on the occupants’ adaptive behaviors for thermal comfort in a Japanese condominium equipped with Home Energy Management System (HEMS). Online questionnaire survey was conducted in a condominium with 356 families from November 2015 to October 2016 to understand the occupants’ behaviors. The number of 17036 votes from 39 families was collected. The indoor air temperature, relative humidity and illuminance were measured at the interval of 2-10 minutes to know indoor thermal environmental conditions. The occupants were found using different active behaviors for thermal comfort adjustments even in rather harsh summer and winter. Around 80% of the occupants surveyed opened windows when the outdoor air temperature was 30⁰C in free running (FR) mode and the clothing insulation was 0.93 clo when the outdoor air temperature was 0⁰C. The result showed that the use of mechanical heating and cooling was not necessarily the first priority to improve indoor thermal environment. Our result along with other results in residential buildings showed that the adaptive behaviors of the occupants are one of the primary ways to adjust indoor thermal comfort. This fact is important in enhancing the energy saving building design.


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