Among the factors that influence the resilience and sustainability of cities in general, and of inhabited spaces in particular, there are extreme temperatures and, in particular, for people, thermal comfort is something that should be considered. This problem includes all aspects of comfort for users of inhabited spaces in both buildings and vehicles. The purpose of this paper is to present the details of a recently designed and created thermal manikin that comprises 79 superficial zones with independent neuro-fuzzy temperature regulation. Both the component parts of the manikin and the acceptance strategy are described. Flexible heating elements were used to control the temperature, on which five digital sensors are positioned. In order to establish the relationship between heat loss and ambient temperature, the thermal manikin was calibrated in a climatic chamber. The thermal manikin was able to predict local sensations through the equivalent temperature concept of the so-called Predicted Mean Vote.

International audiencePerforated solar walls pre-heat the fresh air introduced in the building when the air is forced to pass through this solar heated perforated facade. The heat transfer between the fluid and the metal is intensified depending especially on the flow's characteristics. An experimental campaign on an innovative solar collector was performed in the laboratory of Building Services from Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest. The solar collector with lobed perforations was analyzed and the results indicated that the system can attain a high thermal performance, but only for a certain range of airflow rate

In turbulent flows as in HVAC applications, the fluctuation of air speed can affect the sensation of thermal comfort. This study is a part of a larger experimental and numerical campaign intended to evaluate the influence of the turbulence intensity at the inlet of air distribution systems on the local draft sensation and thermal discomfort for different ventilation cases using numerical simulations. For five different imposed values of turbulence intensity (0%, 3%, 10%, 30%, 50%) the local heat loss for different body parts was quantified CFD simulations were performed using a realistic model of human body along with an experimental validation with a humanoid thermal manikin. The CFD model was further exploited for several cases to evaluate the influence of turbulence intensity on the comfort indicators and local heat loss. The recorded velocity, turbulence and temperature fields allowed us to estimate the distributions of DR, PPD and PMV indexes which showed no significant changes, but correlations were found for the imposed turbulence intensity and local heat loss on different body parts, indicating the influence on thermal perception.

Thermal comfort evaluation for vehicle occupants is very complicated due to the transient nature and non-uniformity of the vehicle interior. The thermal sensation of an automotive occupant is affected by the surrounding environment. More than this, the actual standard is proposing three evaluation indexes and was developed for steady state and controlled conditions and some of the indexes are not adapted for this complex environment. In this article the three standardized indexes values are compared in term of thermal comfort, in a vehicle passenger in summer season. The results are showing that the mean values of PMV/PPD model calculated in a single point with Comfort Sense equipment are far from the TSV mean values which was collected in questionnaires, while the teq index which was calculated with an advanced thermal manikin are closer to the TSV comfort votes. This may be explained by the fact that the TSV and teq consider the sensation for each body part at the local level. For a correct evaluation of the thermal comfort in non-uniform and transient environments like in the vehicles, is not enough to measure in a single point and the results to be considered in all the ambiance. The main conclusion is that the PMV/PPD indexes are not very well adapted to the vehicle environment.

Important parameters in the study of design criteria for sewer pipes are related to shear velocity. The aim of this paper is to obtain a numerical model which does not require significant computational resources and that is feasible for the calculation of shear velocity. We created a numerical model in a free surface flow over artificial roughness elements represented by hemispheres. The numerical model is designed to be identical with an experimental model previously studied. We have investigate velocity and vorticity fields and the distribution of turbulent stresses using a SST k-ω model