Investigation on human thermal comfort of the ecological community in arid area of Lanzhou, China

Abstract

A coupling model was established to investigate the influencing factors of outdoor thermal-humidity environment, in which it is considered for the water-evaporation from porous pavement and plant transpiration. The model was verified by the experimental method. The influence of building height and spacing is also analyzed by simulation method for the thermal-humidity environment of the ecological community in Lanzhou. The results show that the apparent temperature becomes more and more sensitive to the ambient temperature with building height. While the sensitivity value of the Predicted Mean Vote to relative humidity gradually increased with the increase in building height. The Predicted Mean Vote changes from the minimum value of 1.571–1.752 as the building height changes from 75 m to 100 m, resulting in the moderate heat stress of people while the building height was 100 m. It is inappropriate for super high-rise buildings to be used when the building spacing is 25 m. The apparent temperature and Predicted Mean Vote decline with the increase in building spacing, meaning a larger building spacing lead to a better human thermal comfort. Therefore, to increase building spacing and adopt porous pavement can significantly improve the thermal comfort of the ecological community in arid areas.