Efficiency Enhancement on Thermal Comfort Assessment of Indoor Space with Air-Conditioner Using Computational Analysis

• Main Authors: Yu-Tuan Chou, Shao-Yi Hsia, Bi-Wen Lee
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2014-01-01
• Series: Mathematical Problems in Engineering
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/739619

Thermal comfort providing is one of the biggest uses of energy in building. For giving better human comfort, the suitable operation conditions of air-conditioner are the most important. The quick and right approach is necessary. In this paper, a small office is studied to improve office staff staying for a long period of time and achieve the thermal comfort environment for reducing energy consumption. Commercial software, Solidworks, is utilized for modeling the facilities and the Flow Simulation module for analyzing the air properties of the indoor space. Four types of air-conditioner operation are applied to set the simulated conditions, including exterior temperature, outlet temperature and wind speed of air-conditioner, and location of air-conditioner. Predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percent dissatisfied (PPD) at specific office areas are further acquired through dynamic anthropometry. For seeking the optimal control factors, both of the full factorial method and Taguchi method are utilized to obtain the PMV of specified location. The analyzed result shows the evaluation speed of indoor thermal comfort by Taguchi method is faster than the full-factorial method. It is concluded that software simulation with Taguchi method shows the successful implementation and higher efficiency for thermal comfort assessment.