An Ergonomic Approach of IEQ Assessment: A Case Study

Only in the last fifteen years, the application of the ergonomics principles stated the need to achieve a good IEQ (indoor environmental quality) as a result of thermal, visual, acoustic comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ). The awareness increased that an adequate design of the indoor environment, where people work and live, requires a synergic approach to all facets involved in full compliance with sustainability. IEQ strictly affects the overall building energy performances and exhibits an antagonistic relationship with respect to the energy saving requirements. In addition, the effects of low IEQ levels on the health and the productivity at work could even greater than those related to the energy costs of building facilities. The role played by IEQ is very important especially in school environments. Particularly, children are extra sensitive to a poor indoor environment as they are physically still developing and, in comparison to healthy adults, will suffer the consequences of a poor indoor environment with also negative effects in learning ability. Because of all mentioned issues an integrated approach in the design and in the assessment of school buildings is required where ergonomics plays a crucial role. Since more than 20 years InEQualitES (Indoor Environmental Quality and Energy Saving) team, made by researchers and professors from Universities of Salerno and Naples, has focused the research on the environmental quality in schools. The experience gained in the field allowed to build a large database of subjective and objective data and helped us to find effective solution aimed to solve most common problems related to the application of assessment methods. Based upon this experience, this discussion will be mainly focused to the main criticalities related to the thermal comfort assessment in schools with special reference to the integration of objective investigations (referred to a mean subject statistically significant) and subjective investigations which are the only able to show possible differences (age, gender and so on) in experienced perception

Thermal simulation of a supermarket cold zone with integrated assessment of human thermal comfort

This work seeks to analyze the thermal comfort of the occupants in a large building of Commerce and Services, integrating measures of assessment and energy efficiency promotion. The building is still in the construction phase and at its conclusion, will correspond to a supermarket located in the Central region of Portugal. For the evaluation of thermal comfort, Fanger’s methodology was used, where the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD) were calculated based on a detailed analysis of the environmental variables. These are essential to obtain, namely, mean air velocity, mean radiant temperature, mean air temperature and relative humidity. The other crucial variables are the metabolic rate and the thermal clothing resistance. The simulations necessary for the thermal comfort assessment were performed in ANSYS Fluent, in order to minimize the energy consumption in the cold thermal zone of the building, the sales area with frozen and chilled food, by means of reducing the inflow of air, without compromising thermal Comfort. The final results showed that the reduction of the amount of air to be inflated did not compromise the thermal comfort of the occupants. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methodology allowed the creation of comfort maps, albeit for a single zone due to computational limitations. According to the results, the most comfortable zone was located right below the air insufflation with the summer being a more comfortable season. In winter, the main problem detected was the cold located near the floor.The authors would like to express their gratitude for the support given by FCT within the R&D Units Project Scope UIDB/00319/2020 (ALGORITMI) and R&D Units Project Scope UIDP/04077/2020 (MEtRICs)