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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 1
    Citation - Scopus: 1
    Latent Psychological Pathways in Thermal Comfort Perception: The Mediating Role of Cognitive Uncertainty on Depression and Vigour
    (MDPI, 2025) Ozbey, Mehmet Furkan; Turhan, Cihan; Alkan, Nese; Akkurt, Gulden Gokcen
    Thermal comfort is the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment, and it is assessed through subjective evaluation, according to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. While research has traditionally emphasised physical factors, growing evidence highlights the role of the state of mind in shaping thermal perception. In a prior Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis, six mood subscales-Anger, Confusion, Vigour, Tension, Depression, and Fatigue-were examined for how they affect the absolute difference between actual and predicted thermal sensation. Depression and vigour were found to be the most influential, while confusion appeared least impactful. However, to accurately assess the role of confusion, it is necessary to consider its potential interactions with other mood subscales. To this end, a mediation analysis was conducted using Hayes' PROCESS tool. The mediation analyses revealed that confusion partially mediated depression's effect in males and vigour's effect in females. These results suggest that, despite a weak direct impact, confusion critically influences thermal perception by altering the effects of key mood states. Accounting for the indirect effects of mood states may lead to more accurate predictions of human sensory experiences and improve the design of occupant-centred environments.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 5
    Citation - Scopus: 4
    Reconstructing Energy-Efficient Buildings After a Major Earthquake in Hatay, Türkiye
    (Mdpi, 2024) Saleh, Yousif Abed Saleh; Akkurt, Gulden Gokcen; Turhan, Cihan
    T & uuml;rkiye's earthquake zone, primarily located along the North Anatolian Fault, is one of the world's most seismically active regions, frequently experiencing devastating earthquakes, such as the one in Hatay in 2023. Therefore, reconstructing energy-efficient buildings after major earthquakes enhances disaster resilience and promotes energy efficiency through retrofitting, renovation, or demolition and reconstruction. To this end, this study proposes implementing energy-efficient design solutions in dwelling units to minimize energy consumption in new buildings in Hatay, Southern Turkiye, an area affected by the 2023 earthquake. This research focused on a five-story residential building in the district of Kurtlusar & imath;maz & imath;, incorporating small-scale Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) with thin-film photovoltaic (PV) panels, along with the application of a green wall surrounding the building. ANSYS Fluent v.R2 Software was used for a numerical investigation of the small-scale IceWind turbine, and DesignBuilder Software v.6.1.0.006 was employed to simulate the baseline model and three energy-efficient design strategies. The results demonstrated that small-scale VAWTs, PV panels, and the application of a green wall reduced overall energy use by 8.5%, 18%, and 4.1%, respectively. When all strategies were combined, total energy consumption was reduced by up to 28.5%. The results of this study could guide designers in constructing innovative energy-efficient buildings following extensive demolition such as during the 2023 earthquake in Hatay, T & uuml;rkiye.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 31
    Citation - Scopus: 31
    A Novel Data-Driven Model for the Effect of Mood State on Thermal Sensation
    (Mdpi, 2023) Turhan, Cihan; Ozbey, Mehmet Furkan; Ceter, Aydin Ege; Akkurt, Gulden Gokcen
    Thermal comfort has an important role in human life, considering that people spend most of their lives in indoor environments. However, the necessity of ensuring the thermal comfort of these people presents an important problem, calculating the thermal comfort accurately. The assessment of thermal comfort has always been problematic, from past to present, and the studies conducted in this field have indicated that there is a gap between thermal comfort and thermal sensation. Although recent studies have shown an effort to take human psychology into account more extensively, these studies just focused on the physiological responses of the human body under psychological disturbances. On the other hand, the mood state of people is one of the most significant parameters of human psychology. Thus, this paper investigated the effect of occupants' mood states on thermal sensation; furthermore, it introduced a novel "Mood State Correction Factor" (MSCF) to the existing thermal comfort model. To this aim, experiments were conducted at a mixed-mode building in a university between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2022. Actual Mean Vote (AMV) and Profile of Mood States (POMS) were used to examine the effect of mood state on thermal sensation. The outcomes of this study showed that in the mood states of very pessimistic and very optimistic, the occupants felt warmer than the calculated one and the MSCFs are calculated as -0.125 and -0.114 for the very pessimistic and very optimistic mood states, respectively. It is worth our time to note that the experiments in this study were conducted during the COVID-19 Global Pandemic and the results of this study could differ in different cultural backgrounds.
  • Article
    Citation - WoS: 15
    Citation - Scopus: 18
    An Integrated Decision-Making Framework for Mitigating the Impact of Urban Heat Islands on Energy Consumption and Thermal Comfort of Residential Buildings
    (Mdpi, 2023) Turhan, Cihan; Atalay, Ali Serdar; Akkurt, Gulden Gokcen
    Urban heat island (UHI) is a zone that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural zones as a result of human activities and rapid and dense urbanization. Excessive air temperature due to the UHI phenomenon affects the energy performance of buildings and human health and contributes to global warming. Knowing that most of the building energy is consumed by residential buildings, therefore, developing a framework to mitigate the impact of the UHI on residential building energy performance is vital. This study develops an integrated framework that combines hybrid micro-climate and building energy performance simulations and multi-criteria decision-making techniques. As a case study, an urban area is analyzed under the Urban GreenUP project funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme. Four different strategies to mitigate the UHI effect, including the current situation, changing the low-albedo materials with high-albedo ones, nature-based solutions, and changing building facade materials, are investigated with a micro-climatic simulation tool. Then, the output of the strategies, which is potential air temperature, is used in a dynamic building energy simulation software to obtain energy consumption and thermal comfort data of the residential buildings in the case area. Finally, a multi-criteria decision-making model, using real-life criteria, such as total energy consumption, thermal comfort, capital cost, lifetime and installation flexibility, is used to make a decision for decreasing the UHI effect on residential energy performance of buildings. The results showed that applying NBSs, such as green roofs and changing existing trees with high leaf area density ones, have the highest ranking among all mitigation strategies. The output of this study may help urban planners, architects, and engineers in the decision-making processes during the design phase of urban planning.