Investigation of thermal comfort responses with fuzzy logic

Abstract

In order to reduce the energy consumption of buildings a series of new heating, ventilation and air conditioning strategies, methods, and equipment are developed. The architectural trends show that office and educational buildings have large glazed areas, so the thermal comfort is influenced both by internal and external factors and discomfort parameters may affect the overall thermal sensation of occupants. Different studies have shown that the predictive mean vote (PMV)—predictive percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) model poorly evaluates the thermal comfort in real buildings. At the University of Debrecen a new personalized ventilation system (ALTAIR) was developed. A series of measurements were carried out in order to test ALTAIR involving 40 subjects, out of which 20 female (10 young and 10 elderly) and 20 male (10 young and 10 elderly) persons. Based on the responses of subjects related to indoor environment quality, a new comfort index was determined using fuzzy logic. Taking into consideration the responses related to thermal comfort sensation and perception of odor intensity a new the fuzzy comfort index was 5.85 on a scale from 1–10.