Ventilation performance index fully considering effects of ventilation air parameters on thermal comfort: Effective Draft – Moisture Temperature

Abstract

Ventilation methods are widely used for creating livable indoor environments. The ventilation performance index of thermal comfort is indispensable for the provision of thermal comfort in indoor environments with ventilation methods. While the air temperature, air velocity, and relative humidity are three predominant environmental air parameters of ventilation methods affecting thermal comfort, existing ventilation performance indices, i.e., Effective Draft Temperature (EDT) and Effective Moisture Temperature (EMT), cannot account for these three parameters simultaneously for thermal comfort evaluation. This study proposes a novel ventilation performance index, i.e., Effective Draft – Moisture Temperature (EDMT) to simultaneously consider the abovementioned three environmental air parameters for the thermal comfort evaluation. The EDMT is proposed based on equivalent thermal comfort effect transfers of the air velocity and relative humidity to the air temperature. Two algorithms of cascaded equivalent thermal comfort transfers are developed, based on which the EDMT is quantified and tabulated for the practical convenience of different demands of thermal comfort under cooling and heating. The results based on Monte Carlo simulations and ASHRAE Thermal Comfort Database II show that the accuracies of thermal comfort evaluation by the EDT and EMT are 88.7% − 95.5% and 70.9% – 89.0% respectively, and those of the proposed EDMTs of Algorithms 1 and 2 are 97.3% − 99.3% and 97.7% − 99.3% respectively. The proposed EDMTs of Algorithms 1 and 2 are credible and convenient for practical applications and contribute to updating ventilation performance evaluation-related standards for developing thermally comfortable buildings.