The outdoor pedestrian thermal comfort and behavior in a traditional residential settlement – A case study of the cave dwellings in cold winter of China

Abstract

Many Chinese are living in the traditional buildings, especially in rural regions. Cave dwelling settlement is a significant living residential form in China. Because of the special thermal adaptive behavior, residents in such regions will have a different thermal sensation in winter. In order to assess the local’s thermal behavior, we conduct the field measurement, numerical simulation and questionnaire survey in a caving dwelling settlement in winter, and the index-PET (physiological equivalent temperature) is evaluated for assessing the outdoor thermal conditions in the research site. The final results show that the neutral temperature of local traditional dweller is 16.5 °C PET, lower than existing standard, also proves that local residents are more tolerant than the residents in urban regions. At last, we strongly make an appeal to put forward the different assessing standard of thermal comfort in rural and urban zone, even the two different sites are in the same climate zone, thus help to improve energy efficiency in rural regions of China.