Thermal comfort characteristics in naturally ventilated,residential apartments in a hot-dry climate of India

Abstract

This paper deals with analysing the thermal comfort performance of apartment units in a typical hot, dry climatic region, through real-time monitoring and dynamic simulation adopting Environmental Systems Performance – research (ESP-r) thermal simulation software. Real-time monitoring of thermal comfort parameters was carried out in representative units for a period of six months between January and June (winter to summer). The measured data were analysed and used to validate the simulated results obtained from the ESP-r model, which was subsequently used to establish the prevailing comfort characteristics and the thermal comfort response of the residential units. Thermal comfort predictions through Fanger’s expected Predicted Mean Vote (ePMV), Tropical Summer Index (TSI) and comfort temperature (T_comf) exhibited a significant variation. During summer, ePMV and T_comf estimated higher amount of heat discomfort (50% and 62%, respectively) compared to TSI index, which estimated 76% tolerable conditions when an air velocity of 1 m/s is available. During winter, TSI index indicated the prevalence of higher cold discomfort compared to the other indices. The results obtained have been used to develop predictive formulae for assessing thermal comfort for this building type, which can be used to arrive at quick thermal comfort estimates for any proposed design in a similar context.

Keywords

Adaptive comfort Hot-dry climate Naturally ventilated apartments Thermal comfort Tropical Summer Index

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