Experimental Confirmation of the Reliability of Fanger’s Thermal Comfort Model—Case Study of a Near-Zero Energy Building (NZEB) Office Building

Michał Piasecki, Małgorzata Fedorczak-Cisak, Marcin Furtak and Jacek Biskupski
Additional contact information
Michał Piasecki: Building Research Institute, 00-611 Warsaw, Poland
Małgorzata Fedorczak-Cisak: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, 31-155 Cracow, Poland
Marcin Furtak: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, 31-155 Cracow, Poland
Jacek Biskupski: Faculty of Energy and Fuels, AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, 30-059 Cracow, Poland

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-25

Abstract: Designing and constructing near zero energy buildings (NZEBs) is a challenge not only from a structural point of view, but also from the point of view of ensuring appropriate climate comfort for users. The standards describing how to ensure comfort were created in times when the challenges of building ZEB/NZEB were not yet explored and energy issues were not as important as they are today. Therefore, the assessment of the thermal and climatic comfort of people living and working in such buildings requires a new or revised approach to the methodology of thermal comfort assessment. In this article, the authors present the results of a thermal comfort study based on measurements and thermal sensory tests. Testing was carried out in an experimental office building (passive standard). The main goal of the experiment was to compare the thermal comfort measurement method based on the ISO-Fanger model with the actual comfort results obtained by the panellists in the model office condition. The tests allowed the lowest operating temperature providing thermal comfort (predicted mean vote (PMV) = 0 and −0.5) to be determined. Sensory tests were conducted using three types of questions. The results were compared to the other researchers’ findings. It was noted that the panellists showed better thermal comfort sensation at lower temperatures than would result from the traditional Fanger distribution, so the authors proposed the experimental function of percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) = f(PMV). The authors hope that it contributed to the actual state of knowledge as a “small and specific scale” validation of the existing thermal comfort model. The results also revealed that the method of heating has an influence on the subjective thermal sensation.

Keywords: thermal comfort; thermal comfort model; panel tests; NZEB; indoor environmental quality; PMV; PPD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2461/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2461/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:9:p:2461-:d:226078

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().