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Atmosphere
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Indoor Thermal Comfort Research
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Indoor Thermal Comfort Research

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Biometeorology and Bioclimatology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 March 2025) | Viewed by 5563

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ewa Zender-Świercz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Building Physics and Renewable Energy, Kielce University of Technology, 25-314 Kielce, Poland
Interests: indoor air quality; thermal comfort; CFD; heat recovery; air exchange
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Małgorzata Król

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Department of Heating, Ventilation and Dust Removal Technology, Faculty of Energy and Environmental Engineering, Silesian University of technology, Gliwice 44-100, Poland
Interests: fire safety; fire ventilation; safety management; road tunnel safety
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today we spend most of our time indoors. Therefore, it is extremely important to maintain air parameters that allow you to feel thermal comfort. Thermal comfort affects human wellbeing, but also affects work efficiency or learning effectiveness. Being in rooms where comfort is not maintained reduces the efficiency of work and learning, resulting in increases in the absenteeism of employees and students. In addition, the modern drive for energy efficiency reduces air exchange. Insufficient air exchange can cause thermal discomfort and symptoms of sick building syndrome. This, in turn, can cause irreversible health effects.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to evaluate indoor thermal comfort and to develop good practises in building use. Original results of field and controlled research and subjective surveys, models, and review articles on thermal comfort and the proper functioning of buildings are welcome. We encourage authors to identify the directions of the development of HVAC systems in buildings and the development of building construction to improve the conditions of thermal comfort.

Dr. Ewa Zender-Świercz
Dr. Małgorzata Król
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • thermal comfort
  • indoor air
  • indoor parameters
  • HVAC
  • architecture

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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26 pages, 3948 KiB  
Article
Coupling Indoor and Outdoor Heat Stress During the Hot Summer of 2022: A Case Study of Freiburg, Germany
by Olga Shevchenko, Markus Sulzer, Andreas Christen and Andreas Matzarakis
Atmosphere 2025, 16(2), 167; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16020167 - 1 Feb 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 905
Abstract
Indoor and outdoor heat stress, which can appear during warm periods of the year, often has a negative impact on health and reduces productivity at work and study. Intense heat waves (HWs) are causing increasing rates of morbidity and mortality. This study aimed [...] Read more.
Indoor and outdoor heat stress, which can appear during warm periods of the year, often has a negative impact on health and reduces productivity at work and study. Intense heat waves (HWs) are causing increasing rates of morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to analyze the coupling and delay of indoor and outdoor heat stress during HW events, using the example of ten workplaces (WPs) situated in different offices and buildings in the medium-sized city of Freiburg, Germany. The relationships between air temperature, humidity, and thermal stress intensity in the WPs were explored during HW periods. It was found that the level of thermal load in the investigated WPs was very different compared to that outdoors (during HWs and the entire summer). The mean physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) for the summer of 2022 inside the investigated offices was 2 °C higher than outside. All classes of thermo-physiological stress were observed outdoors at a meteorological station during the study period. While at eight of the ten workplaces, the most frequent physiological stress was slight heat stress (ranging between 62.4% and 97.4% of the time), the other two WPs were dominated by moderate heat stress (53.7% and 60.6% of the time). The daily amplitudes as well as diurnal courses of air temperature, humidity, and PET during the summer differed significantly at the ten different WPs. It is suggested to use vapor pressure instead of relative humidity to characterize and compare different HWs both outside and inside. It is proposed for future work research to analyze not only room and building characteristics but also the characteristics of the surroundings of the building for a better understanding of the key factors that influence human thermal comfort in different workplaces. A framework of the drivers affecting the coupling of outdoor and indoor heat stress is proposed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Thermal Comfort Research)
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19 pages, 12498 KiB  
Article
Thermal Environment and Comfort in Japanese Dwellings During Summer
by Nokuto Mizutani, Hom Bahadur Rijal, Naja Aqilah and Supriya Khadka
Atmosphere 2025, 16(2), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos16020157 - 31 Jan 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 757
Abstract
As people spend the majority of their time indoors, maintaining a comfortable and suitable thermal environment within buildings is essential for improving quality of life. Previous studies in Japan have investigated the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) in indoor environments; however, studies primarily focused [...] Read more.
As people spend the majority of their time indoors, maintaining a comfortable and suitable thermal environment within buildings is essential for improving quality of life. Previous studies in Japan have investigated the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) in indoor environments; however, studies primarily focused on residential buildings are lacking. Therefore, a field survey of 17 Japanese dwellings was carried out during the summer, for which a total of 1166 thermal sensation votes (TSVs) were collected from 23 respondents. The results show that the average indoor air temperature is 26.4 °C, which is 1.6 °C lower than the recommendation for summer temperature by the Japanese government. The variation in globe temperature and WBGT indicates that there are significant differences in cooling usage behavior, with a strong correlation between WBGT and indoor globe temperature. The acceptable indoor globe temperature exhibits a wider range in free-running (FR) mode than in cooling (CL) mode. The mean comfort temperature was 26.9 °C in FR mode, while it was 27.0 °C in CL mode. These findings indicate that the occupants felt comfortable at the high indoor temperature, suggesting there is a possibility to reduce the energy used for cooling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Thermal Comfort Research)
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16 pages, 6823 KiB  
Article
Application of Statistical Learning Algorithms in Thermal Stress Assessment in Comparison with the Expert Judgment Inherent to the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI)
by Peter Bröde, Dusan Fiala and Bernhard Kampmann
Atmosphere 2024, 15(6), 703; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15060703 - 12 Jun 2024
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1188
Abstract
This study concerns the application of statistical learning (SL) in thermal stress assessment compared to the results accomplished by an international expert group when developing the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). The performance of diverse SL algorithms in predicting UTCI equivalent temperatures and [...] Read more.
This study concerns the application of statistical learning (SL) in thermal stress assessment compared to the results accomplished by an international expert group when developing the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). The performance of diverse SL algorithms in predicting UTCI equivalent temperatures and in thermal stress assessment was assessed by root mean squared errors (RMSE) and Cohen’s kappa. A total of 48 predictors formed by 12 variables at four consecutive 30 min intervals were obtained as the output of an advanced human thermoregulation model, calculated for 105,642 conditions from extreme cold to extreme heat. Random forests and k-nearest neighbors closely predicted UTCI equivalent temperatures with an RMSE about 3 °C. However, clustering applied after dimension reduction (principal component analysis and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding) was inadequate for thermal stress assessment, showing low to fair agreement with the UTCI stress categories (Cohen’s kappa < 0.4). The findings of this study will inform the purposeful application of SL in thermal stress assessment, where they will support the biometeorological expert. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Thermal Comfort Research)
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Other

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19 pages, 8683 KiB  
Case Report
Indoor Thermal Environment Evaluation for Emergency Medical Tents in Heating Season: Onsite Testing and Case Study in China
by Meng Han, Zhineng Jin, Ying Zhao, Yin Zhang, Wenyang Han and Menglong Zhang
Atmosphere 2024, 15(3), 388; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15030388 - 21 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1691
Abstract
In this study, the standard tent used by the China International Medical Team (Sichuan) was used as the research object to study the internal temperature change in medical tents in a low-temperature environment relying on heating equipment. Method: Four temperature sensors were arranged [...] Read more.
In this study, the standard tent used by the China International Medical Team (Sichuan) was used as the research object to study the internal temperature change in medical tents in a low-temperature environment relying on heating equipment. Method: Four temperature sensors were arranged along the horizontal direction at a 1.2 m height in the medical tent, and more sensors were installed at heights of 0.1, 0.2, 0.6, 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, and 2.5 m. A total of 11 temperature sensors were set. Temperature tests were conducted in January and February 2021 in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. During the test, the running time of the heating equipment was controlled in real time according to the temperature change trend. A Kolmogorov–Smirnov(K-S) test was used to verify the reliability of the experimental data. The temperature change trend was used to characterize the influence of the heating and cooling equipment on the temperature change inside the tent. Results: Due to the position angle of the heating equipment and the influence of the external environment, the spatial distribution of the ambient temperature inside the medical tent was obviously uneven. In winter, an electric heater with a heating power of about 2500 W can increase the internal temperature of the tent to 16.7 °C, significantly improving the internal thermal environment of the medical tent. The ambient temperature in the medical tent is positively correlated with the height and the installation position of the heating equipment. Conclusion: Medical tents can maintain the ambient temperature well to meet medical needs with the support of heating equipment with sufficient power. The temperature distribution law of medical tents in this experiment has good guiding significance for the placement angle of heating equipment and the configuration position of medical equipment and provides a reference for the development of thermal insulation materials for medical tents. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Thermal Comfort Research)
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