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Thermal Comfort

Thermal comfort depends on environmental and personal factors. The primary environmental factors are air temperature, humidity, air velocity, and mean radiant temperature. Personal factors include clothing insulation and metabolic rate, which varies depending on a person's activity level, physical characteristics, gender, and age. Thermal comfort is achieved when there is satisfaction with the thermal environment through a balance of these factors.

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Samesha Jayasekara
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46 views3 pages

Thermal Comfort

Thermal comfort depends on environmental and personal factors. The primary environmental factors are air temperature, humidity, air velocity, and mean radiant temperature. Personal factors include clothing insulation and metabolic rate, which varies depending on a person's activity level, physical characteristics, gender, and age. Thermal comfort is achieved when there is satisfaction with the thermal environment through a balance of these factors.

Uploaded by

Samesha Jayasekara
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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thermal comfort

Thermal comfort can be simply defined as the condition of mind which expresses satisfaction
with the thermal environment. Today it is assessed by subjective evaluation of ANSI/ASHRAE
Standard 55 according to ASHRAE Standard 55, it is defined as the perception due to a
combined effect of many factors. The condition of thermal comfort can be different from one to
one as it depends on many factors.
Primary factors that is mainly affect the thermal comfort of a building can be listed as below.
1. environmental factors
Air temperature
Air humidity
Air velocity
Mean radiant temperature
2. personal factors
Clothing insulation
Metabolic rate

Environmental factors

Air temperature
The temperature of the air surrounding the body which is usually given by the degrees Celsius.
Air temperature is classified in to three parts as WBT, DBT, and saturation temperature or dew
point.
Dry bulb temperature (DBT)
It can be defined as the temperature of the air which is measured by using a thermometer
freely exposed to the air. But shielded from radiation and moisture.
Wet bulb temperature (WBT)
WBT can be defined as the temperature a parcel of air would have it were cooled to (100%
relative humidity) by the evaporation of the water in to it.
Dew point or saturation temperature
Saturation temperature is the temperature that the water vapor in a sample of air at constant
barometric pressure condenses in to liquid water at the same rate at which it evaporates.
Mean radiant temperature (MRT)
Uniform temperature of an imaginary enclosure in which that radiant heat transfer from the
human body is equal to the radiant heat transfer in the actual non-uniform enclosure is defined
as the MRT. MRT is the combined effect of all the radiations together as it is coming from a
single source.
Air humidity
Basically, humidity means the amount of water vapor in the air. Humidity of the air can be
discussed under two sub topics called relative humidity and absolute humidity.
Relative humidity
It can be defined as the ratio of the partial pressure of the water vapor to the equilibrium vapor
pressure of water at the same temperature. The relative humidity between 40% to 70% doesn’t
much affect for the thermal comfort of a building. In working environments such as where air
conditions are not available or where the out-door weather conditions highly affect for the
indoor thermal environment, relative humidity can be greater than 70%.
Absolute humidity
It can be defined as the mass of water vapor per unit volume of air containing the water vapor.
Relative humidity has greater impact towards the thermal comfort of a building than the
absolute humidity.
Air velocity
Movement of the air inside the building is simply mean by the air velocity. If the air in the
building is stagnated or still will cause for people to feel stuffy and will create unusual odors.
Heat loss through convection can be increased in a warm or humid condition, without having
any impact to the air temperature by the moving air. Physical activities of people also increase
the air movement of indoor environment of a building.

Personal factors
Clothing insulation
Thermal comfort of a building highly depends on the insulating effect of the clothing. Insulation
property is changed based on the material type that is used for cloths. So, different clothing
materials have different convention capacities. If clothing fails to provide sufficient insulation,
the person who wears the cloths may be in a risk of cold injuries. As well as too much clothing
will cause for heat stress. Due to this it is much important to identify the contribution of
clothing towards the thermal comfort.
Metabolic rate
When people are engaged in more physical work, more heat generate. So, in order to not to be
over heated, more heat required to be lost. However, metabolic rate is different for person to
person. Depending on the physical characteristics, gender, age, fitness level, weight and size of
a particular person, it can be different. Not only that metabolic rate of a person gets vary based
on the activity he or she is engaged in. below chart shows how vary the metabolic rate with
different activities.

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