Assessment of indoor thermal environment in different prototypical school buildings in Jordan

Abstract

Indoor thermal environment is vital for occupant comfort and productivity. This is true of educational facilities where people are expected to engage in prolonged period of intense concentration. This research focuses on evaluating and comparing the effect of envelopes in uninsulated prototypical governmental schools built before 2003 with thermally insulated. Indoor thermal environments of classrooms of the old and new schools were assessed using two methods. The first, indoor temperature profiles obtained through field monitoring were analyzed under the adaptive comfort standard model employed in ASHRAE standard 55. The second method relied upon thermal simulation of the selected classrooms using DB to obtain the predicted mean vote (PMV) values of classrooms in accordance with ISO 7730. Finally, for the validation purpose, a control group was conducted to function as a base case model for the schools. A calibration test was conducted, by comparing the indoor environmental measurements obtained from field monitoring with the simulation results. Based on the above results, both schools exceeded the range comfort level during peak hours. The result indicate that the indoor thermal environment in the new school was more satisfactory than the old one. Keywords: Indoor thermal environment, School buildings, Jordan, Assessment