posted on 2015-06-12, 08:46authored byNarguess Khatami
This study aimed to develop retrofitted natural ventilation options and control strategies for existing office buildings to improve thermal comfort, indoor air quality and energy consumption. For this purpose, a typical office building was selected in order to identify opportunities and constraints when implementing such strategies. Actual performance of the case study building was evaluated by conducting quantitative and qualitative field measurements including physical measurements and questionnaire surveys.
Based on the actual building performance, a combination of Dynamic Thermal Simulation (using IES) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (using PHOENICS) models were built to develop appropriate natural ventilation options and control strategies to find a balance between energy consumption, indoor air quality, and thermal comfort. Several retrofitted options and control strategies were proposed and the best retrofitted natural ventilation options and control strategies were installed in the case study building.
Post occupancy evaluation of the case study building after the interventions was also carried out by conducting physical measurements and questionnaire surveys.
Post refurbishment measurements revealed that energy consumption and risk of overheating in the refurbished building were reduced by 9% and 80% respectively. The risk of unacceptable indoor air quality was also reduced by 60% in densely occupied zones of the building. The results of questionnaire surveys also revealed that the percentage of dissatisfied occupants reduced by 80% after intervention.
Two new products including a Motorized ceiling tile and NVlogIQ , a natural ventilation wall controller, were also developed based on the results of this study.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2014
Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.