Study of the Thermal Comfort of a Building that does not Comply with Construction Standards in Madagascar: Experimentation and Simulation with OMEdit

Abstract

A very large number of buildings in developing countries are far from complying with the standards of housing. This paper presents the subjective study of the thermal comfort of a building that does not comply with construction standards or thermal regulations, located in Madagascar. Modeling was done using the Modelica tool, especially its BuildSysPro library. In order to minimize the inaccuracies, a step of an experimental adjustment of the developed numerical model was also carried out usingexperimental reference data that were obtained from the temperaturemeasurementsof the studied building elements as well as the wind speed and the received solar radiation flux. It was found that despite the obvious non-compliance with building standards and thermal regulations, the building has an acceptable thermal environment vis-à-vis its occupant.