Investigation of human thermal comfort and energy efficiency in tropical buildings

• Main Author: Nurjihan Mohammed Noor.
• Other Authors: Chang Wei-Chung
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Environmental engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/45123
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Thermal comfort is very important to many work-related factors. It can affect the concentration levels of the workers, and in turn affect their performance and productivity. Also, thermal discomfort is known to be the cause of sick building syndrome symptoms. High temperature and high relative humidity reduces thermal comfort and indoor air quality.In view of thermal comfort as a whole, human thermal influences and the human thermal comfort needs to be considered and compared with other hot and humid countries such as Japan, India and China. Sustainable thermal comfort and natural ventilation were also looked into. There are two methods in analysing thermal comfort- subjective scales and PMV calculations. The first method requires the use of thermal comfort questionnaires and evaluating the perception of occupants against a seven scale rating. The second method is through experimental testing and using the data collected to formulate a numerical conclusion to the thermal comfort with the use of MATLAB software.