Effect of heat loads and furniture on the thermal comfort of an isolated family house under a naturally ventilated environment

Abstract

Natural ventilation is the most energy-efficient method by which to passively cool a building, reducing the energy consumption, and improving the thermal comfort and indoor air quality. However, designing buildings using cross-ventilation is far more complicated than mere mechanical design due to the indoor and outdoor parameters in addition to the building configurations. The authors have previously reported that the indoor thermal comfort in an isolated family house is affected significantly by the outdoor conditions; the current study, however, focusses on the impact of heat loads and furniture on the indoor thermal comfort. In this work, The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach was employed with a coupled indoor-outdoor simulation. The results showed that the heat dissipated from electrical appliances found in daily life only have a small effect on the thermal comfort indices at both the seated and standing levels because they use only relatively small amounts of energy, whereas these indices are increased remarkably at these two levels when an additional heat source was operated in conjunction with these appliances. In addition, no significant differences between the empty building and the furniture-filled building were observed at the two levels when comparing the air velocity, temperature and thermal comfort indices.