Indoor thermal environments in Chinese residential buildings responding to the diversity of climates

Li, B., Du, C., Yao, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4269-7224, Yu, W. and Costanzo, V. (2018) Indoor thermal environments in Chinese residential buildings responding to the diversity of climates. Applied Thermal Engineering, 129. pp. 693-708. ISSN 1359-4311 doi: 10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.10.072

Abstract/Summary

China has a diversity of climates and a unique historic national heating policy which greatly affects indoor thermal environment and the occupants’ thermal response. This paper quantitatively analyzes the data from a large-scale field study across the country conducted from 2008 to 2011 in residential buildings. The study covers nine typical cities located in the five climate zones including Severe Cold (SC), Cold (C), Hot Summer and Cold Winter (HSCW), Hot Summer and Warm Winter (HSWW) and Mild (M) zones. It is revealed that there exists a large regional discrepancy in indoor thermal environ- ment, the worst performing region being the HSCW zone. Human’s long-term climate adaptation leads to wider range of acceptable thermal comfort temperature. Different graphic comfort zones with accept- able range of temperature and humidity for the five climate zones are obtained using the adaptive Predictive Mean Vote (aPMV) model. The results show that occupants living in the poorer thermal environments in the HSCW and HSWW zones are more adaptive and tolerant to poor indoor conditions than those living in the north part of China where central heating systems are in use. It is therefore recommended to develop regional evaluation standards of thermal environments responding to climate characteristics as well as local occupants’ acclimatization and adaptation in order to meeting dual targets of energy conservation and indoor thermal environment improvement.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/73225
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.10.072
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of the Built Environment > Energy and Environmental Engineering group
Publisher	Elsevier
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