Human thermal comfort in a HVAC office building located in a humid subtropical climate: field studies vs. analytical approach

Abstract When it comes to thermal comfort in fully air conditioned buildings, Fanger's predictive mean vote/predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PMV/PPD) published in 1970 is the most widely used model to predict and analyse environments. This paper presents thermal comfort data from an office building that operates with a central air-conditioning system (HVAC) located in Florianópolis, a city with humid subtropical climate on the southern coast of Brazil. This paper presents and compares thermal sensation results obtained from field studies (284 participants) against calculated PMV/PPD values based on the ASHRAE 55 (2013) analytical method. Electronic questionnaires were administered simultaneously to instrumental measurements (air temperature, radiant air temperature, air speed and humidity) during 2014. The results showed that, although 91% of the occupants evaluated the environment as thermally comfortable, the mean PPD scored 16% of dissatisfied people. Moreover, results suggested a certain inadequacy of this model to the climate in question, especially when the PMV ranges between ± 0.50, the interval determined as comfortable by ASHRAE 55 (2013).