Electrochromic windows (ECWs) are promising smart façade technologies that can enhance indoor comfort and reduce energy demands, yet their performance in university classrooms remains underexplored in cold regions. This study evaluates the applicability of ECWs in classrooms in Xi’an, a representative cold-climate city, through dynamic simulations of three classroom types. Three control strategies—based on outdoor temperature, illuminance, and solar radiation—were tested under different thresholds. The results show that compared with static windows, ECWs can increase the annual mean indoor temperature by up to 1.4 °C, extend thermal comfort time ratio by 4.5%, improve visual comfort duration by 6.3%, and reduce heating and cooling demands by 11.6 and 14.3 kWh/m², respectively. These findings demonstrate both the feasibility and the differentiated benefits of ECWs in educational buildings, filling the research gap on their performance across different classroom types and offering practical guidance for sustainable classroom design and operation in cold climates.

In industrial and logistics settings, the use of soft and rigid spinal exoskeletons has been increasing. However, under a unified assistance level and comparable work scenarios, systematic comparisons of their effects on users’ thermophysiological responses and subjective thermal perceptions remain limited. Twenty male participants performed manual handling tasks under three load conditions (5, 10, and 15 kg) in three experimental conditions: without the exoskeleton (WEXO), a rigid exoskeleton (REXO), and a soft exoskeleton (SEXO). Metabolic rate, mean skin temperature (MST), thermal comfort vote (TCV), and thermal sensation vote (TSV) were measured. The key findings are as follows: Compared with WEXO, both exoskeletons significantly reduced metabolic rate. Across all loads, SEXO yielded a lower metabolic rate than REXO and showed a more gradual linear increase as the load increased, whereas REXO exhibited a larger rise at 15 kg. Overall, MST was higher in REXO than in SEXO. Wearing an exoskeleton was often associated with increased skin temperature at 5–10 kg, yet MST decreased for both exoskeletons at 15 kg. Subjective ratings further indicated better TCV and TSV with SEXO than with REXO, with the difference more pronounced under higher loads. Taken together, under the conditions of this study, the soft exoskeleton appears to better balance assistive benefits and thermal comfort. Nevertheless, its heat transfer and heat dissipation performance should be further optimized in future designs.

Modern residential balconies have the potential to function as passive solar buffer spaces, yet their thermal performance in cold-region high-rise apartments remains insufficiently explored. This study proposes a stepwise glazing–phase change material (PCM) integrated balcony sunspace strategy for a typical high-rise residential apartment in Xi’an, China. Dynamic simulations were conducted to evaluate the effects of balcony orientation, glazing system, PCM melting temperature, and PCM thickness on indoor thermal comfort and annual heating and cooling demand. First, an open living room-connected balcony was used as the benchmark case, and five glazing systems were compared under southwest-, south-, and southeast-facing orientations. Then, based on the optimal glazing system, a 9C–PCM–9C partition wall was introduced between the enclosed balcony sunspace and the living room. The results showed that the optimal glazing system increased the annual thermal comfort ratio by 4.15–5.24 percentage points and reduced annual heating and cooling demand by 13.78–15.80 kWh/m² and 6.16–7.21 kWh/m², respectively. Further PCM integration achieved additional improvements, with 21 °C + 30 mm identified as the optimal configuration for all orientations. Compared with the glazing-only case, it increased thermal comfort by 2.05–2.50 percentage points and reduced heating and cooling demand by 4.80–5.10 kWh/m² and 1.64–1.76 kWh/m², respectively. The findings provide a practical passive design strategy for climate-responsive balcony sunspaces in cold-region residential buildings.

This study proposes an orientation-responsive balcony sunspace integrating phase change material (PCM) storage with temperature-controlled mechanical ventilation for high-rise residential buildings. A validated model of a balcony–living-room system in Xi’an was used to evaluate southeast-, south-, and southwest-facing balconies. Phase-change temperature, latent heat capacity, PCM thickness, and ventilation rate were sequentially investigated using annual heating demand, cooling demand, and thermal comfort time ratio as performance indicators. The optimal phase-change temperatures were 26 °C, 27 °C, and 28 °C for the southeast, south, and southwest orientations, respectively, demonstrating the importance of matching PCM properties to orientation-dependent solar exposure. Within the investigated ranges, a latent heat capacity of 300 kJ/kg and a PCM thickness of 30 mm provided the best overall performance. Relative to the optimized PCM-only configurations, mechanical ventilation reduced heating demand by 3.3–5.6% and total thermal demand by 2.0–3.4%, while improving the comfort time ratio by 0.9–1.5 percentage points. Its benefit became limited above 6 ACH. The final integrated configurations reduced total thermal demand by 7.4–11.4% compared with the reference enclosed balconies. These results indicate that PCM contributed most of the overall improvement, whereas temperature-controlled ventilation provided a supplementary enhancement by improving winter solar-heat transfer. The findings provide an orientation-specific design approach for PCM–ventilation integrated balcony sunspaces.