Thermal comfort in university classrooms: Analysis of simulated and real conditions

Providing healthy buildings with high Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is getting increasingly important and this necessity is now widely recognised. Among the aspects that define IEQ, thermal comfort is the one that can have the greatest influence on individual perception of the environment. To provide thermal comfort in the built environment, dynamic energy simulations are useful tools that provide insights into energy consumption and indoor environmental quality. However, comfort assessment is influenced by several factors and not all tools are able to estimate it efficiently. This study assesses the possibility of using Building Energy Simulations (BES) to provide a fast yet reliable tool to predict thermal comfort indicators, validating it with on-site measurements. The practical impact on environmental design is immediate, providing an essential tool in the early stages of building design. The results showed some differences between the values of Fanger's PMV indices, albeit minor. Moreover, results indicate that there is a higher variability between the results of the thermal sensation expressed by the subjective thermal sensation obtained through questionnaires than between the real and simulated scenarios.