Real-time control of occupants thermal comfort in buildings

Abstract

Providing satisfactory indoor environmental conditions, air quality and thermal comfort through adequate ventilation is crucial in maintaining safe, healthy and comfortable buildings. Since, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are significant contributors to energy consumed in buildings, natural ventilation solutions are being increasingly utilised.This study investigated the use of natural ventilation as a solution to maintaining healthy and comfortable environmental conditions in a large mixed-use demonstrator building, the Engineering Building (EB) at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway in Ireland. The results presented in this paper provide valuable information about the operation of the building and will allow for future validation of computational models to test different building operation strategies.