Effects of thermal-acoustic interaction on airport terminal's indoor thermal comfort: A case study in cold region of China

Abstract

Airport terminals are typical large-scale public buildings. Improving the indoor environment of the terminal plays an important role in increasing users' comfort status. In this study, we chose Xianyang Airport Terminal 3 and conducted field tests and questionnaire surveys to obtain indoor environmental parameters and subjective perceptual evaluations. By comparing the correlations between the two aspects, we made analyses about the interaction effects of thermal-acoustic environments on people's indoor thermal comfort. The results show that there are significant correlations between TSV and the temperature, SSV and the sound level. The neutral temperatures of MB and CB are 19 °C and 21 °C, respectively. TCV are mostly above 0, but when the temperature reaches a certain state, it would decrease rapidly. Most of the participants hasn't showed strong feelings of comfort or discomfort, which revealed a relatively high tolerance and adaptation to the indoor environment. As the summer is hot and humid, setting the indoor temperature at 24 °C would be a balance between cost and comfort. The overall sound level is loud, which decreased the TCV to a certain extent while the tendency of how thermal comfort changes remains the same. According to different characteristics of the space, various passive and active approaches were suggested to improve the thermal and acoustic environment. This study partly agrees with the previous studies and we hope to provide reference for the optimization of summer indoor environment in large-scale public buildings in similar climate and location.