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Thermal Comfort has the powerful ability to create moods and it also affects working conditions of individuals. In order to harness maximum comfort, a conducive environment can be created. The use of shading device is the one of the best means of creating a conducive environment. This research assesses the effect of shading device on thermal comfort in residential building and how effective these sun shading elements are, in reaching a thermally conducive environment. The scope of the study...

Energy optimization in buildings by controlling the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is being researched extensively. In this paper, a model-free actor-critic Reinforcement Learning (RL) controller is designed using a variant of artificial recurrent neural networks called Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks. Optimization of thermal comfort alongside energy consumption is the goal in tuning this RL controller. The test platform, our office space, is designed using...

Energy optimization in buildings by controlling the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is being researched extensively. In this paper, a model-free actor-critic Reinforcement Learning (RL) controller is designed using a variant of artificial recurrent neural networks called Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks. Optimization of thermal comfort alongside energy consumption is the goal in tuning this RL controller. The test platform, our office space, is designed using...

This paper evaluates the effects of solar shading strategies on thermal comfort in low-income tropical housing in Uganda. Dynamic thermal simulations are conductedand the effects of various shading strategies including curtains, roof and window overhangs, veranda and tress on solar heat gain and thermal comfort are investigated.Adaptive approach for naturally ventilated buildings defined by CEN standardis used to assess theconditions in the case study buildings. According to the results,...

The most prominent challenge in 21th century is global warming which seriously threats the mankind. Building sector with 40% of global energy consumption and GHG emission play a key role in this threat. In this regard, the impact of cooling systems cannot be ignored where along with ventilation and heating systems totally account for 60% of energy consumed in buildings. Passive cooling systems can be a promising alternative to reduce energy consumption. One of the oldest passive cooling...

Basic elementary school is compulsory for students in most countries of the world. Therefore, children spend a considerable amount of their time in school studying. Subsequently, exposure to substances in their school indoor environment can affect their studies and health. In addition , children are more susceptible to indoor pollutants because their organ systems are immature. In general, there has been more research on the impact of offices and industrial environments on adult occupants...

Objective To study indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in elementary school buildings and its association with students’ learning outcomes. Methods Measurements of ventilation rates and temperatures were recorded during school days in 108 classrooms in 60 schools in the spring and summer of 2007; background information on 3514 school buildings was retrieved from the Finnish population register. Data on school environment and students’ health were collected by questionnaires from 4248 students...

The validity of existing thermal comfort models is examined for upper primary school children in classroom settings. This is of importance to enhance productivity in the learning environment and to improve the control of artificial heating and cooling, including the potential for energy savings. To examine the thermal perceptions of children aged 10–12 years in non-air-conditioned classrooms, three sets of field experiments were conducted in boys’ and girls’ primary schools in Shiraz, Iran....

In modern societies, educational buildings play a key role in creating a good social climate and conditions in which children and young people can develop. Several international studies have been conducted to evaluate students’ performance and the factors that most influence it, including classrooms’ thermal comfort. Yet, various revealed differences between pupils’ perception and the results of thermal comfort models. The large majority of the thermal comfort studies in classrooms were...

A field study was done on the thermal comfort of seven air-conditioned university classrooms in the hot and humid climate of Malaysia. The aims of this paper are to investigate the perceptions of thermal comfort and the adaptation method of students in air-conditioned classrooms. In total, 189 respondents from the classrooms completed the questionnaire. A comparison was made between the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and the Thermal Sensation Vote (TSV) and it was found that the TSV values tended...

Teaching Climate Change's concepts are hard and challenging to impress in the minds of adolescent learners in a traditional classroom environment. Designing appropriate instructional strategies with the best visual experiences enable learners to grasp the complex principle behind the concept and stimulate their interest. Hence, technology can be seen as a panacea. In this regard, a study was conducted to explore Form II learners' view on learning Climate Change with blended learning...

Using a multilevel approach, we estimated the effects of classroom ventilation rate and temperature on academic achievement. The analysis is based on measurement data from a 70 elementary school district (140 fifth grade classrooms) from Southwestern United States, and student level data (N = 3109) on socioeconomic variables and standardized test scores. There was a statistically significant association between ventilation rates and mathematics scores, and it was stronger when the six...

This study presents thermal comfort and relevant parameters for kindergarten children in naturally ventilated classrooms in Seoul, Korea. The dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity, the airflow velocity, and the globe temperature were measured at 10 randomly selected kindergartens from April to June, 2013, and a survey was conducted three times a day for 119 kindergarten children (age: 4–6) to investigate their thermal comfort, clothing insulation, and metabolism. The effects of these...

A predictive models were developed to determine the thermal comfort level for the academic classroom by using artificial neural networks (ANNs). The paper reports experimental and theoretical analysis on a problem of achieving a desired thermal comfort level. The proposed method focused on the classical artificial (feed forward) neural networks (ANN) and the time-series NARX feedback neural networks to achieve the thermal comfort assessed using the predicted mean vote (PMV). The field...

The paper describes the application of a combined neuro-fuzzy model for indoor temperature dynamic and automatic regulation. The neural module of the model, an auto-regressive neural network with external inputs (NNARX), produces indoor temperature forecasts that are used to feed a fuzzy logic control unit that simulates switching the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system on and off and regulating the inlet air speed. To generate an indoor temperature forecast, the NNARX...

The paper demonstrates the importance of feature selection for recurrent neural network applied to problem of one hour ahead forecasting of thermal comfort for office building heated by gas. Although the accuracy of the forecasting is similar for both the feed-forward and the recurrent network, the removal of features leads to accuracy reduction much earlier for the feed-forward network. The recurrent network can perform well even with less than 50% of features. This brings significant benefits...

In this research the thermal comfort and thermal comfort parameters for children in primary school classrooms has been investigated. Actual thermal sensation and clothing insulation of children (age 9–11) in non-air-conditioned classrooms in three different schools in the Netherlands have been obtained. Results are available for a total of 24 days, covering winter, spring and summer conditions (year 2010). Questionnaires have been applied to obtain the actual thermal sensation and clothing...