Effectiveness of Thermal Comfort Models to Evaluate Occupants’ Satisfaction Levels in Office Buildings

Abstract

The efforts of integrating the natural ventilation within the building zones to achieve the optimum local thermal comfort levels have recently shown a significant development in the building industry. A number of operation models have been developed to access the feasibility of natural ventilation to enhance the occupants’ thermal comfort levels. However, each of the models has its own limitations in providing a comprehensive solution to overcome the issues of the natural ventilation and thermal comfort within a building layout. In this paper, the author has reviewed two common thermal comfort models, compared the effectiveness of the models, and proposed an enhanced model framework based on integrated evaluation approach for both thermal comfort and ventilation effectiveness.