A Novel Comfort Temperature Determination Model Based on Psychology of the Participants for Educational Buildings in a Temperate Climate Zone

Abstract

Maintaining thermal comfort in the educational buildings is vital due to the impacts on learning effectiveness of students. Therefore, development of a proper comfort temperature in educational buildings is a must. In naturally ventilated and mixed-mode buildings, the adaptive thermal comfort model, which considers additively psychological, and behavioural factors to the Fanger's PMV/PPD model, is commonly applied based on regression analyses. However, the psychological adjustments based on current mood state are very limited in these adaptive thermal comfort models. Therefore, this study focuses on the psychological adjustments in terms of Profile of Mood States in order to predict comfort temperature of students in a case building. The experiments are conducted in a university on a temperate climate zone for a long period-data including both heating and cooling seasons. In this study, the comfort temperatures for each student are determined via Griffith method for the case building. Moreover, the current mood states of students are assessed utilizing the Profile of Mood States survey, which are collected via a developed mobile application. As a conclusion, the relation between the current mood state of the students and comfort temperature are statistically investigated. The results show that a Griffith constant are found as 0.332/K and mean annual comfort temperature is found as 21.32 degrees C in the case building. Additionally, a significant difference is found in the comfort temperatures among the students who have more, or fewer concerns than typically reported. The novelty of the study is to present a comfort temperature determination model which considers human psychology as a starter study in the literature.