The Visualization Study on Research Progress of Thermal Comfort for Indoor Environment Based on CiteSpace

Abstract

The papers published from 2000 to 2019 in CNKI database were collected. CiteSpace software was used as visualization tool to analyze the research progress of indoor thermal comfort in China based on those papers. The results showed that the period, from 2000 to 2004, was the initial developing stage of researches on thermal comfort in China. From 2005 to 2019, there were two research fields developed of thermal comfort. One was to study the adaptive thermal comfort in different climates in China and try to promote the prediction model according to different climate characteristics. Another research keyword was to expand the field of thermal comfort research, e.g. studying the thermal comfort of the elderly and children, and studying rural houses and tall space buildings. Literature analysis also disclosed that “thermal sensation” and “thermal environment” were the core keywords in the field of thermal comfort from 2000 to 2019. According to research methods, “numerical simulation”, “field research” and “questionnaire” were commonly used. Recently, Thermal comfort under natural ventilation became the hot keyword in thermal comfort research. From 2011 to 2019, thermal comfort of rural housing had become a hot topic.