A Central Air Conditioning Control Strategy to Enhance Thermal Comfort in Library Buildings

Abstract

A comfortable indoor thermal environment is usually controlled through air conditioning, which can greatly improve work efficiency. However, current air conditioning system design may not consider the spatio-temporal distribution of the indoor environment for large-scale buildings, so the air conditioning system needs to be optimized. Few studies have examined such optimization related to different weather conditions outside the building. This study presents a method to formulate an air condition adjustment strategy for each specific zone in a library with large glass curtain walls, based on the diurnal change of thermal environment. We measured the indoor thermal environmental conditions and recorded the thermal comfort perception of room occupants. The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and apparent temperature model were adopted to predict the occupants’ thermal comfort, resulting in a suggested comfort range. Based on our results, the comfortable range of PMV and apparent temperature was identified, and this comfortable range could be used as a basis for an example of adjusting the air conditioning system to improve indoor thermal comfort.