About 40% of the total energy consumption in the building sector is required by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems necessary to ensure indoor air quality and thermal comfort for the occupants’ well-being. Despite the greater interest and progress in energy-saving measures for the building sector, the existing normative and standards concerning thermal comfort in buildings still mainly adopt a static approach for thermal comfort regulation. Specifically, indoor air temperature and humidity set points are considered constant and the natural adaptability of the human body to environmental conditions is neglected. Such circumstance leads to an incorrect setting of indoor air set points and, often, to both oversized HVAC systems and much higher energy consumption for space heating and cooling needs. To contribute to overcome this issue, this paper presents a novel approach to model the thermal behaviour of the human body necessary for the proper assessment of personal thermal comfort and of related energy consumption. The proposed model allows for the dynamic evaluation of the impact of different physical and physiological parameters, human behaviour features, and environmental conditions on the multidomain comfort of occupied indoor spaces. The reliability of the developed multiphysics-based model has been proved by exploiting measurements obtained during an experimental campaign conducted by exploiting an innovative test cell with unique instrumentations, built-up for studies on multidimensional comfort as a function of combinations of controlled physical stimuli to subjects physiologically monitored through wearables. Measured dynamic trends of the skin temperature of the test cell occupant, of mean radiant temperature, and of indoor CO2 concentration are used for the model validation. In particular, a very good agreement between simulation and experimental results of occupant skin temperature is observed, obtaining a maximum relative percentage error of 3%, and Pearson index values above 0.79.
Building occupants-centered HVAC system management: a multidomain model of the human body for comfort assessment / Barone, G.; Buonomano, A.; Forzano, C.; Gnecco, V. M.; Pigliautile, I.; Pisello, A. L.; Russo, G.. - 2:(2023), pp. 1074-1081. (Intervento presentato al convegno 18th Healthy Buildings Europe Conference 2023: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries tenutosi a Aachen nel 2023).
Building occupants-centered HVAC system management: a multidomain model of the human body for comfort assessment
Barone G.;Buonomano A.;Forzano C.;Russo G.
2023
Abstract
About 40% of the total energy consumption in the building sector is required by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems necessary to ensure indoor air quality and thermal comfort for the occupants’ well-being. Despite the greater interest and progress in energy-saving measures for the building sector, the existing normative and standards concerning thermal comfort in buildings still mainly adopt a static approach for thermal comfort regulation. Specifically, indoor air temperature and humidity set points are considered constant and the natural adaptability of the human body to environmental conditions is neglected. Such circumstance leads to an incorrect setting of indoor air set points and, often, to both oversized HVAC systems and much higher energy consumption for space heating and cooling needs. To contribute to overcome this issue, this paper presents a novel approach to model the thermal behaviour of the human body necessary for the proper assessment of personal thermal comfort and of related energy consumption. The proposed model allows for the dynamic evaluation of the impact of different physical and physiological parameters, human behaviour features, and environmental conditions on the multidomain comfort of occupied indoor spaces. The reliability of the developed multiphysics-based model has been proved by exploiting measurements obtained during an experimental campaign conducted by exploiting an innovative test cell with unique instrumentations, built-up for studies on multidimensional comfort as a function of combinations of controlled physical stimuli to subjects physiologically monitored through wearables. Measured dynamic trends of the skin temperature of the test cell occupant, of mean radiant temperature, and of indoor CO2 concentration are used for the model validation. In particular, a very good agreement between simulation and experimental results of occupant skin temperature is observed, obtaining a maximum relative percentage error of 3%, and Pearson index values above 0.79.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
