Hospital is of interest when consider its especial function. Because of the obviously different between the normal residential buildings, the requirement of hospitals’ indoor climate strictly differs from other buildings. The author starts this report by briefly stating the building construction currently. Surrounded the topic of thermal comfort and energy consumption, many suggestion and options came out in this report to develop a better condition. Firstly, the introduction of the hospital buildings requires the background of the hospital object and the purpose to this report will be stated. Secondly, the simulation tool and how to use this tool simulate our real case are introduced. Then, the summer case is investigated by this tool after the model is proved to be validated. Finally, the improvement of establishing a better indoor environment is raised and the results of improvement and conclusion can be found. The final result will show the optimal solution that discovered by this study after compared different alternatives carefully.

Residential buildings in the United States are responsible for the consumption of 38% of electricity, and for much of the fluctuations in the power demands on the electric grid, particularly in hot climates. Residential buildings are also where occupants spend nearly 69% of their time. As “smart” technologies, including electric grid-connected devices and home energy management systems are increasingly available and installed in buildings, this research focuses on the use of these technologies combined with available energy use data in accomplishing three main objectives. The research aims to: (a) better understand how residential buildings currently use electricity, (b) evaluate the use of these smart technologies and data to reduce buildings’ electricity use and their contribution to peak loads, and (c) develop a methodology to assess the impacts of these operational changes on occupant thermal comfort. Specifically this study focuses on two of the most significant electricity consumers in residential buildings: large appliances, including refrigerators, clothes washers, clothes dryers and dishwashers, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. First, to develop an improved understanding of current electricity use patterns of large appliances and residential HVAC systems, this research analyzes a large set of field-collected data. This dataset includes highly granular electricity consumption information for residential buildings located in a hot and humid climate. The results show that refrigerators have the most reliable and consistent use, while the three user-dependent appliances varied more greatly among houses and by time-of-day. In addition, the daily use patterns of appliances vary in shape depending on a number of factors, particularly whether or not the occupants work from home, which contrasts with common residential building energy modeling assumptions. For the all-air central HVAC systems studied, the average annual HVAC duty cycle was found to be approximately 20%, and varied significantly depending on the season, time of day, and type of residential building. Duty cycle was also correlated to monthly energy use. This information provides an improvement to previously assumed values in indoor air modeling studies. Overall, the work presented here enhances the knowledge of how the largest consumers of residential buildings, large appliances and HVAC, operate and use energy, and identifies influential factors that affect these use patterns. The methodologies developed can be applied to determine use patterns for other energy consuming devices and types of buildings, to further expand the body of knowledge in this area. Expanding on this knowledge of current energy use, smart large appliances and residential HVAC systems are investigated for use in reducing peak electric grid loads, and building energy use, respectively. This includes a combination of laboratory testing, field-collected data, and modeling. For appliance peak load reduction, refrigerators are found to have a good demand response potential, in part due to the nearly 100% of residential buildings that have one or more of these appliances, and the predictability of their energy consumption behavior. Dryers provide less consistent energy use across all homes, but have a higher individual peak power demand during afternoon and evening peak use times. These characteristics also make dryers also a good candidate for demand response. The study of continuous commissioning of HVAC systems using energy data found that both runtime and energy use are increased, and cooling capacity and efficiency are reduced due to the presence of faults or inefficiencies. The correction of these faults have an estimated 1.4% to 5.7% annual impact on a residential building’s electricity use in a cooling-dominated climate such as the one studied. Overall, appliance peak load reduction results are useful for utility companies and policy makers in identifying what smart appliance may provide the most peak energy reduction potential through demand response programs. The results of the HVAC study provides a methodology that can be used with energy use data, to determine if an HVAC system has the characteristics implying an inefficiency may be present, and to quantify the annual savings resulting from its correction. The final aspect of this research focuses on the development of a tool to enable an assessment the effect of operational changes of a building associated with energy and peak load reduction on occupant comfort. This is accomplished by developing a methodology that uses the response surface methodology (RSM), combined with building performance data as input, and uncertainly analysis. A second-order RSM model constructed using a full-factorial design was generally found to provide strong agreement to in and out-of-sample building simulation data when evaluating the Average Percent of People Dissatisfied (PPD[subscript avg]). This 5-step methodology was applied to assess occupant thermal comfort in a residential building due to a 1-hour demand response event and a time-of-use pricing rate schedule for a variety of residential building characteristics. This methodology provides a model that can quickly assess, over a continuous range of values for each of the studied design variables, the effect on occupant comfort. This may be useful for building designers and operators who wish to quickly assess the effect of a change in building operations on occupants. / text

The primary purpose of the current research was to implement a numerical model to investigate the interactions between the energy consumption in Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and occupants’ thermal comfort in commercial buildings. A numerical model was developed to perform a thermal analysis of a single zone and simultaneously investigate its occupants’ thermal sensations as a non-linear function of the thermal environmental (i.e. temperature, thermal radiation, humidity, and air speed) and personal factors (i.e. activity and clothing). The zone thermal analyses and thermal comfort calculations were carried out by applying the heat balance method and current thermal comfort standard (ASHRAE STANDARD 55-2004) respectively. The model was then validated and applied on a single generic zone, representing the perimeter office spaces of the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), to investigate the impacts of variation in occupants’ behaviors, building’s envelope, HVAC system, and climate on both energy consumption and thermal comfort. Regarding the large number of parameters involved, the initial summer and winter screening analyses were carried out to determine the measures that their impacts on the energy and/or thermal comfort were most significant. These analyses showed that, without any incremental cost, the energy consumption in both new and existing buildings may significantly be reduced with a broader range of setpoints, adaptive clothing for the occupants, and higher air exchange rate over the cooling season. The effects of these measures as well as their combination on the zone thermal performance were then studied in more detail with the whole year analyses. These analyses suggest that with the modest increase in the averaged occupants’ thermal dissatisfaction, the combination scenario can notably reduce the total annual energy consumption of the baseline zone. Considering the global warming and the life of a building, the impacts of climate change on the whole year modeling results were also investigated for the year 2050. According to these analyses, global warming reduced the energy consumption for both the baseline and combination scenario, thanks to the moderate and cold climate of Vancouver.

This thesis reports a new set of experimental data and presents an in-depth analysis of the flow physics of a jet stream produced by a large quarter-round corner-mounted displacement diffuser. The air velocity, temperature and turbulence intensity inside the displacement ventilation (DV) jet have been thoroughly analyzed and compared with the reported findings of previous studies and model predictions. Furthermore, thermal comfort has been analyzed using the measured data following the ASHRAE standard. This thesis also aims at establishing an accurate numerical approach for simulating the heat and fluid flow in a room ventilated by a DV system. The supply boundary condition has been thoroughly investigated, which includes tests of the conventional box and momentum modeling methods, and proposal of a more accurate modeling approach. In addition, the predictive accuracy of the standard k-ϵ, RNG k-ϵ, SST k-ω and RSM turbulence models has been examined against the experimental data.

Unfavorable thermal comfort conditions are common in the non-conditioned apartment buildings typical of Dhaka (Ali, 2007; Hafiz, 2004). Causes behind such unfavorable thermal comfort conditions include (but are not limited to) Dhaka?s climate, microclimate in Dhaka's typical residential neighborhood, its socio-economic context, housing type, and its inadequate planning regulations. Dhaka's climate is hot humid but it can be tackled with well designed buildings as well as well as designed neighborhoods, both of which demands ample open space. However, due to land scarcity and high population density, building developments lack open spaces and that results in unfavorable thermal comfort conditions in apartment buildings. Dhaka?s previous zoning regulations were unable to control this dense development, and therefore, a new set of zoning regulations were enacted (2008). However, no post-evaluation study was conducted to research the effect of this new set of regulations. The intention of this research is to first evaluate the existing regulations, and second, to suggest appropriate zoning regulation schemes for Dhaka's non-conditioned apartment buildings (for a lot size of 1/3 acre), which would provide favorable thermal comfort conditions without changing its existing density. To accomplish the first goal, this research analyzed two existing zoning schemes (one based on regulations of 1996, and the other based on the regulations of 2008). To accomplish the second goal, this research analyzed two hypothetical zoning schemes. The hypothetical ones were studied because this research finds 1996 and 2008 regulations to be two extremes (in terms of allowing open space and building height), and therefore examination of in-between alternative zoning schemes seemed essential for this study. To analyze the four zoning regulation schemes' impact on thermal comfort in apartment buildings, four sets of built environment were created in EnergyPlus (Energy Simulation software) as well as in Fluent (Computational Fluid Dynamics software). Each set of built environment is a cluster of nine buildings; and each set is different from each other in terms of their building footprints and building heights. The building on the center was modeled implicitly, and remaining buildings were modeled as solid blocks (to act as neighboring buildings) for blocking sun and wind. The ES and CFD software simulated possible solar, daylight, and wind availability inside the central building, and consequently produce data on thermal comfort conditions, namely indoor temperature and air velocity. The simulation results were compared to see which zoning schemes provided the most favorable thermal comfort conditions. This research found one of the in-between schemes (60% allowable footprint, 9-story height limit) to be more appropriate in terms of thermal comfort conditions than the other three schemes; because it provides better solar protection and better natural ventilation and consequently it reduces indoor temperature and increases indoor air velocity.

This thesis reports a new set of experimental data and presents an in-depth analysis of the flow physics of a jet stream produced by a large quarter-round corner-mounted displacement diffuser. The air velocity, temperature and turbulence intensity inside the displacement ventilation (DV) jet have been thoroughly analyzed and compared with the reported findings of previous studies and model predictions. Furthermore, thermal comfort has been analyzed using the measured data following the ASHRAE standard. This thesis also aims at establishing an accurate numerical approach for simulating the heat and fluid flow in a room ventilated by a DV system. The supply boundary condition has been thoroughly investigated, which includes tests of the conventional box and momentum modeling methods, and proposal of a more accurate modeling approach. In addition, the predictive accuracy of the standard k-ϵ, RNG k-ϵ, SST k-ω and RSM turbulence models has been examined against the experimental data.

The primary purpose of the current research was to implement a numerical model to investigate the interactions between the energy consumption in Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems and occupants’ thermal comfort in commercial buildings. A numerical model was developed to perform a thermal analysis of a single zone and simultaneously investigate its occupants’ thermal sensations as a non-linear function of the thermal environmental (i.e. temperature, thermal radiation, humidity, and air speed) and personal factors (i.e. activity and clothing). The zone thermal analyses and thermal comfort calculations were carried out by applying the heat balance method and current thermal comfort standard (ASHRAE STANDARD 55-2004) respectively. The model was then validated and applied on a single generic zone, representing the perimeter office spaces of the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), to investigate the impacts of variation in occupants’ behaviors, building’s envelope, HVAC system, and climate on both energy consumption and thermal comfort. Regarding the large number of parameters involved, the initial summer and winter screening analyses were carried out to determine the measures that their impacts on the energy and/or thermal comfort were most significant. These analyses showed that, without any incremental cost, the energy consumption in both new and existing buildings may significantly be reduced with a broader range of setpoints, adaptive clothing for the occupants, and higher air exchange rate over the cooling season. The effects of these measures as well as their combination on the zone thermal performance were then studied in more detail with the whole year analyses. These analyses suggest that with the modest increase in the averaged occupants’ thermal dissatisfaction, the combination scenario can notably reduce the total annual energy consumption of the baseline zone. Considering the global warming and the life of a building, the impacts of climate change on the whole year modeling results were also investigated for the year 2050. According to these analyses, global warming reduced the energy consumption for both the baseline and combination scenario, thanks to the moderate and cold climate of Vancouver.

This work aims the analysis of two typologies of the most used industrial buildings in the region of the Municipality of Panambi-RS, one with Shed Cover and the other with Continuous Vent Cover. A survey on constructive characteristics was conducted, relating them to the thermal performance, of the buildings and to the thermal comfort conditions which were obtained from measurements of the ambient variables of air temperature, radiant medium temperature, relative humidity and air velocity for summer and winter periods. The human variables, metabolic rate of heat production and clothing used by the workers, were also analyzed. With the results obtained, the thermal performance was analyzed relating to the temperature outside the buildings, and an evaluation of the thermal comfort was conducted inside the working environments. Two alternatives were then presented to enhance the environments of these buildings mainly concerning to decrease the thermal transmittance and the absorption coefficient of evolving solar radiation of buildings and also improvements of thermal conditions of external air. The study offers important inputs and boundaries for future projects of industrial pavilions. / Esse trabalho objetiva a análise de duas tipologias de pavilhões industriais mais comumente encontradas na região do Município de Panambi-RS, uma em Cobertura Shed e a outra em Cobertura Lanternim. Realizou-se o levantamento das características construtivas, relacionado as ao desempenho térmico dos pavilhões e às condições de conforto térmico, as quais foram obtidas à partir de medições das variáveis ambientais de temperatura do ar, temperatura média radiante, umidade relativa e velocidade do ar para os períodos de verão e inverno. As variáveis humanas, taxa metabólica de produção de calor e a vestimenta utilizada pelos funcionários, também foram avaliadas. Com os resultados obtidos foi analisado o comportamento térmico dos pavilhões em relação a temperatura externa, e efetuado uma avaliação do conforto térmico no interior dos ambientes de trabalho. Foram então apresentadas alternativas para a melhoria dos ambientes desses pavilhões, principalmente com relação à redução da transmitância térmica e do coeficiente de absorção da radiação solar da envolvente dos pavilhões, e melhoria das condições de ventilação e das condições térmicas do ar externo. O trabalho fornece subsídios e condicionantes importantes para projetos futuros de pavilhões industriais.

Orientador: Luiz Roberto Carrocci / Banca: Felipe Rinaldo Queiroz de Aquino / Banca: Luiz Octávio Mattos dos Reis / Resumo: Este trabalho analisa edifícios que, devido a sua arquitetura moderna, utilizam grande superfície de vidro nas fachadas apresentando, na maior parte das vezes, problemas de conforto térmico. Como objeto deste estudo decidiu-se por um prédio da UNESP, campus de Guaratinguetá. A análise realizada foi baseada no estudo da insolação (diagrama solar), em medidas locais de temperatura, umidade e no levantamento da carga térmica, objetivando avaliar as condições do edifício e propor soluções visando um melhor conforto térmico com a otimização do consumo de energia elétrica. / Abstract: This work analyzes buildings that, due to their modern architecture, use a great glass surface in the facades presenting, most of the time, problems of thermal comfort. As object of this study we chose a building of UNESP, campus of Guaratingueta. The accomplished analysis was based on the study of the heatstroke (solar diagram), in measuring temperature places, humidity and in the rising of the thermal load, aiming at evaluating the conditions of the building and to propose solutions seeking a better thermal comfort with the optimization of the consumption of electric energy. / Mestre

An integrated heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system is one of the most important components to determining the energy consumption of the entire building. For commercial buildings, particularly office buildings and schools, the heating and cooling loads are largely dependent on the occupant behavioral patterns such as occupancy rates and their activities. Therefore, if HVAC systems can respond to dynamic occupancy profiles, there is a large potential to reduce energy consumption. However, currently, most of existing HVAC systems operate without the ability to adjust supply air rate accordingly in response to the dynamic profiles of occupants. Due to this inefficiency, much of the HVAC energy use is wasted, particularly when the conditioned spaces are unoccupied or under-occupied (less occupants than the intended design). The solution to this inefficiency is to control HVAC system based on dynamic occupant profiles. Motivated by this, the research provides a real-time vision-based occupant pattern recognition system for occupancy counting as well as activity level classification. The proposed vision-based system is integrated into the existing HVAC simulation model of a U.S. office building to investigate the level of energy savings as well as thermal comfort improvement compared to traditional existing HVAC control system. The research is divided into two parts. The first part is to use an open source library based on neural network for real-time occupant counting and background subtraction method for activity level classification with a common static RGB camera. The second part utilizes a DOE reference office building model with customized dynamic occupancy schedule, including the number of occupant schedule, activity schedule and clothing insulation schedule to identify the potential energy savings compared with conventional HVAC control system. The research results revealed that vision-based systems can detect occupants and classify activity level in real time with accuracy around 90% when there are not many occlusions. Additionally, the dynamic occupant schedules indeed can bring about energy savings. Details of vision-based system, methodology, simulation configurations and results will be presented in the paper as well as potential opportunities for use throughout multiple types of commercial buildings, specifically focused on office and educational institutes.