An optimal control strategy for built environment based on the human thermal sensation

Abstract

The automatic control strategy of existing heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems generally determine the set-point of building thermal environment in accordance with the relevant design criterion or occupants’ preference, and have not taken the real-time thermal sensation of human body into consideration, which may make the human body feel uncomfortable under the range of comfortable design parameters. In order to improve the thermal comfort of human body, this paper presented an optimal strategy for indoor building environment control based on the human thermal sensation. The control logic of indoor air temperature based on the thermal sensation of human body was given, and the linear adjustment algorithm was used for realizing the optimal adjustment of indoor temperature set-point. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed control strategy, a numerical simulation platform was constructed, and a series of simulations were carried out to compare the set-point based and proposed control strategies. The results revealed that the proposed control strategy can improve human thermal comfort and have the potential in energy saving compared to the set-point based control strategy. The proposed control strategy is of significance for the application of current thermal comfort research results and the development of built environment automatic control theory.