A comparative thermal comfort study in teaching buildings in autumn and winter season

AbstractThermal comfort throughout a whole year is complicated because the conditions vary greatly in different seasons. The aim of this paper was to understand the influence of seasonal characteristics on the thermal comfort in classrooms and to propose a method to select the suitable adaptive coefficients for different conditions. Field investigations were conducted in a teaching building in Tianjin during autumn and winter. In the study, multiple environmental parameters including the air temperature, black globe temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, and the vertical temperature difference. The respondents’ thermal sensation was collected by questionnaires. The respondents’ thermal sensation and the influence of the seasonal characteristics on the thermal sensation were analyzed. The results showed that the thermal neutral temperature varied in different seasons, and the deviations between mean thermal sensation vote (MTSV) and predicted mean vote (PMV) were evidently discrepant in different se...