Applicable Correlations Based on Field Survey and Theory for Predicting the Indoor Thermal Climate

Abstract

Fanger’s PMV is the most famous thermal sensation index but it is too complex to be applied in practice. Besides, the PMV index does not take into account the effect of the hourly beam and diffuse solar radiation absorbed by the room on the indoor thermal climate. In order to obtain applicable correlations with consideration of solar radiation, a one-year measurement has been carried out in a naturally ventilated residential room in Qujing Normal University of Yunnan province, China. Based on collected data, PMV indices are calculated by using Newton’s iterative method. The correlations of the PMV and the environmental parameters — outdoor air temperature, indoor mean air temperature, mean radiant temperature, wind velocity, relative humidity, and hourly beam and diffuse solar radiation — have been studied by using the multivariable regression techniques. Lots of correlations with high correlativity have been developed in this paper. It is convenient to use these results to predict the indoor thermal climate in the natural ventilation buildings in the subtropical plateau monsoon climate.