4,417 research outputs found
Artificial neural network analysis of teachersïżœïżœïżœ performance against thermal comfort
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in International Journal of Building Pathology and Adaptation on 17/04/2020, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJBPA-11-2019-0098
The accepted manuscript may differ from the final published version.Purpose: The impact of thermal comfort in educational buildings continues to be
of major importance in both the design and construction phases. Given this, it is
also equally important to understand and appreciate the impact of design decisions
on post-occupancy performance, particularly on staff and students. This study aims
to present the effect of IEQ on teachersïżœïżœïżœ performance. This study would provide
thermal environment requirements to BIM-led school refurbishment projects.
Design: This paper presents a detailed investigation into the direct impact of
thermal parameters (temperature, relative humidity and ventilation rates) on
teacher performance. In doing so, the research methodological approach combines
explicit mixed-methods using questionnaire surveys and physical measurements of
thermal parameters to identify correlation and inference. It was conducted through
a single case study using a technical college based in Saudi Arabia. Findings:
Findings from this work were used to develop a model using an Artificial Neural
Network to establish causal relationships. Research findings indicate an optimal
temperature range between 23ïżœïżœC and 25ïżœïżœC, with a 65% relative humidity and
0.4m/s ventilation rate. This ratio delivered optimum results for both comfort and
performance
Sense, Model and Identify the Load Signatures of HVAC Systems in Metro Stations
The HVAC systems in subway stations are energy consuming giants, each of
which may consume over 10, 000 Kilowatts per day for cooling and ventilation.
To save energy for the HVAC systems, it is critically important to firstly know
the "load signatures" of the HVAC system, i.e., the quantity of heat imported
from the outdoor environments and by the passengers respectively in different
periods of a day, which will significantly benefit the design of control
policies. In this paper, we present a novel sensing and learning approach to
identify the load signature of the HVAC system in the subway stations. In
particular, sensors and smart meters were deployed to monitor the indoor,
outdoor temperatures, and the energy consumptions of the HVAC system in
real-time. The number of passengers was counted by the ticket checking system.
At the same time, the cooling supply provided by the HVAC system was inferred
via the energy consumption logs of the HVAC system. Since the indoor
temperature variations are driven by the difference of the loads and the
cooling supply, linear regression model was proposed for the load signature,
whose coefficients are derived via a proposed algorithm . We collected real
sensing data and energy log data from HaiDianHuangZhuang Subway station, which
is in line 4 of Beijing from the duration of July 2012 to Sept. 2012. The data
was used to evaluate the coefficients of the regression model. The experiment
results show typical variation signatures of the loads from the passengers and
from the outdoor environments respectively, which provide important contexts
for smart control policies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
ENVIE Co-ordination action on indoor air quality and health effects; WP3 Final report â Characterisation of spaces and source
Human exposure to environmental pollutants occurs via various pathways. For many
pollutants, especially the volatile ones, air exposure is the dominant pathway.
Exposure via air occurs both outdoors and indoors, with diverse types of indoor
spaces playing a role, e.g., home, workplace, and passenger cabins of means of
transportation. In average people spend over 90% of their time indoors, that
percentage being particularly high for some specific groups as new-born,
elderly, disabled or sick people. The global exposure to air contaminants is
therefore drastically determined by indoor conditions. It is now well
established that indoor air pollution contributes significantly to the global
burden of disease of the population. For a majority of indoor air contaminants,
particularly in the presence of common indoor sources, however, indoor
concentrations usually exceed outdoor concentrations, for some pollutants even
with an indoor/outdoor ratio of 10 or 20. Emissions are identified, accordingly
to the EnVIE approach and grouped into four categories: building materials and
related sources, including dampness and moulds; ventilation, natural and
mechanical, including, or not, heating, cooling and humidification/
dehumidification; consumer products, furnishing, cleaning and household
products; and occupant activities. Emission of chemical substances from
construction materials and products in buildings to the indoor air have been
reported and reviewed for a wide range of substances, including those formed
during secondary reactions, causing complaints of irritation and odour. During
the last two decades there has been increasing advances in construction
technology that have caused a much greater use of synthetic building materials.
Whilst these improvements have led to more comfortable buildings, they also
provide indoor environments with contaminants in higher concentrations than are
found outside. Wood and cork are now frequently used as a building product for
floor coverings, because the material is often regarded as ânaturalâ and
âhealthyâ. However, industrial products, even based on natural raw materials,
may contain a number of artificial ingredients and the chemical emissions will
strongly depend on the type of additives and the manufacturing process. Modern
interior paints are usually based on a polymeric binder. In order to fulfil
requirements on e.g., durability, paint contains various functional chemicals.
Water-borne paints usually also contains small amounts of approved biocides.
Polymeric binders with a very low content of residual monomers have been
developed for paint. Besides the release of substances to the indoor air due to
primary emission, damp building materials may give rise to volatile substances
formed during secondary reactions. Semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) are
now receiving much more attention than heretofore. The HVAC (Heating,
Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems as providers, among others, of
services of cleaning and dilution of pollutants in the indoor air are also
recognized as potential pollution sources. Several studies have shown that the
prevalence of SBS symptoms is often higher in air conditioned buildings than in
buildings with natural ventilation. 8 The outdoor air introduced indoors through
either ventilation systems or natural means is also an important and not always
controllable source for the intake of some outdoor pollutants. Outdoor air used
for ventilation may also be source of pollution containing particulate matter,
particulates of biological origin (microorganisms, pollen, etc.) and various
gases like NOx and O building structures which is a driving force for the
airflows which will transport to indoors water vapour and gaseous or particulate
contaminants. Volatile organic compounds are emitted from a wide variety of
household and consumer products with emission rates that are strongly dependent
on the type of application and are distributed over several orders of magnitude.
A number of product classes are identified and information on ingredients and
available data on emissions from individual products are presented. Human
activities and the associated use of products encompass a wide range of indoor
sources involving release of inorganic gases, particles and organic compounds as
a consequence of the activity. For some releases such as with air fresheners the
release is a necessary part of the activity to achieve the intended effect
whereas for others, such as the release of combustion fumes from a gas
appliance, the purpose of the action (in this case generation of heat) is
different from the emission. Combustion processes are an important source of a
range of air pollutants as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide,
particulates and associated inorganic and organic chemicals, organic vapours
e.g. formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, and benzene. Sources of these are present in
both ambient and indoor environments. The concentrations present in the ambient
air provide a baseline for the level of pollutant found indoors as this air
enters indoors by processes of infiltration and ventilation. However, the
concentration indoors will be modified by processes of sorption to surfaces and
chemical reaction depending on the chemical and physical properties of the
pollutant and internal surfaces. People themselves are a source of emissions of
chemicals and gases, notably CO range of organic compounds that are referred to
as body odours. The removal of such body odours is a prime objective of
ventilation in order to achieve a satisfactory indoor environment. WP3 aims at
to characterize spaces and sources in order to understand where and how to act
to guarantee good IAQ. From the two strategies for good IAQ, source control and
ventilation, the precautionary principle suggests that first priority shall be
given to source control, avoiding, mitigating or simply managing sources of
emissions. An overview of all policies on IAQ or related to IAQ, existing or in
preparation, directly related to indoor air sources, but also covering outdoor
air and industrial emissions, which could affect indirectly IAQ is made.
Considering the presented it could be concluded that IAQ is yet poorly regulated
at EU level, and in view of that some recommendations are made. The
recommendations on policies have taken into account the existing related to IAQ
policies such as new EU policies on chemicals (REACH; 2006/121/EC), consumer
products (GPSD; 2001/95/EC), construction products (CPD; 89/106/EC) and energy
performance of buildings (EPBD; 2002/91/EC) all refer to IAQ issues - suggesting
that they could, and probably should, contribute to IAQ policy development and
advocate an integrative and comprehensive policy approach centred
A Transfer Operator Methodology for Optimal Sensor Placement Accounting for Uncertainty
Sensors in buildings are used for a wide variety of applications such as
monitoring air quality, contaminants, indoor temperature, and relative
humidity. These are used for accessing and ensuring indoor air quality, and
also for ensuring safety in the event of chemical and biological attacks. It
follows that optimal placement of sensors become important to accurately
monitor contaminant levels in the indoor environment. However, contaminant
transport inside the indoor environment is governed by the indoor flow
conditions which are affected by various uncertainties associated with the
building systems including occupancy and boundary fluxes. Therefore, it is
important to account for all associated uncertainties while designing the
sensor layout. The transfer operator based framework provides an effective way
to identify optimal placement of sensors. Previous work has been limited to
sensor placements under deterministic scenarios. In this work we extend the
transfer operator based approach for optimal sensor placement while accounting
for building systems uncertainties. The methodology provides a probabilistic
metric to gauge coverage under uncertain conditions. We illustrate the
capabilities of the framework with examples exhibiting boundary flux
uncertainty
Evaluation of CFD codes by comparison of numerical predictions of an air-conditioned room case study
Nowadays, the advances in computer hardware and software allowed the development of a new generation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes which are much more user-friendly in terms of mathematical modelling, numerical techniques and presentation of results. The aim of this study is to present the evaluation and comparison between the numerical results obtained with two commercial codes, an academic one and experimental data for a of a typical ventilation case study. Therefore, the scope includes the validation of the numerical results and discussion of the potentialities, complexity and user interface of each code.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Model Predictive Control for Signal Temporal Logic Specification
We present a mathematical programming-based method for model predictive
control of cyber-physical systems subject to signal temporal logic (STL)
specifications. We describe the use of STL to specify a wide range of
properties of these systems, including safety, response and bounded liveness.
For synthesis, we encode STL specifications as mixed integer-linear constraints
on the system variables in the optimization problem at each step of a receding
horizon control framework. We prove correctness of our algorithms, and present
experimental results for controller synthesis for building energy and climate
control
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High-Performance Integrated Window and Façade Solutions for California
The researchers developed a new generation of high-performance façade systems and supporting design and management tools to support industry in meeting Californiaâs greenhouse gas reduction targets, reduce energy consumption, and enable an adaptable response to minimize real-time demands on the electricity grid. The project resulted in five outcomes: (1) The research team developed an R-5, 1-inch thick, triplepane, insulating glass unit with a novel low-conductance aluminum frame. This technology can help significantly reduce residential cooling and heating loads, particularly during the evening. (2) The team developed a prototype of a windowintegrated local ventilation and energy recovery device that provides clean, dry fresh air through the façade with minimal energy requirements. (3) A daylight-redirecting louver system was prototyped to redirect sunlight 15â40 feet from the window. Simulations estimated that lighting energy use could be reduced by 35â54 percent without glare. (4) A control system incorporating physics-based equations and a mathematical solver was prototyped and field tested to demonstrate feasibility. Simulations estimated that total electricity costs could be reduced by 9-28 percent on sunny summer days through adaptive control of operable shading and daylighting components and the thermostat compared to state-of-the-art automatic façade controls in commercial building perimeter zones. (5) Supporting models and tools needed by industry for technology R&D and market transformation activities were validated. Attaining Californiaâs clean energy goals require making a fundamental shift from todayâs ad-hoc assemblages of static components to turnkey, intelligent, responsive, integrated building façade systems. These systems offered significant reductions in energy use, peak demand, and operating cost in California
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