Evaluation of thermal comfort and cooling loads for a multistory building

Abstract

The latest UK Climate Projections (UKCP09) show that mean daily temperatures will increase everywhere in the United Kingdom. This will significantly affect the thermal and energy performance of the current building stock. This study examines an institutional fully glazed building and looks into the changes in the cooling loads and thermal comfort of the occupants during the occupied hours of the non-heating period. Furthermore, it investigates the effect of relative humidity (RH) on thermal comfort. The Design Summer Year (DSY) 2003 for London Heathrow has been used as a baseline for this study and the DSY 2050s High Emissions scenario was used to examine the performance of the building under future weather conditions. Results show a 21% increase of the cooling loads between the two examined scenarios. Thermal comfort appears to be slightly improved during the months of May and September and marginally worsen during the summer months. Results of the simulation show that a relative humidity control at 40% can improve the thermal comfort for 53% of the occupied hours. A comparison of the thermal comfort performance during the hottest week of the year, shows that when the relative humidity control is applied thermal comfort performance of the 2050s is similar or better compared to the thermal comfort performance under the baseline.