Thermal Comfort Performance of Buildings

Dear Colleagues,

The MPDI Buildings (IF: 3.324) Special Issue, ‘Thermal Comfort Performance of Buildings’, is dedicated to a wide range of different aspects related to achieving thermal comfort conditions in buildings, with a major focus on novel materials, design methods, and innovative mechanical systems. The human thermal environment is not straight forward and cannot be expressed in the form of a simple one-dimensional measure. Nor can it be satisfactorily defined as a degree scale or by acceptable temperature ranges. Thermal comfort is a personal experience depending on a great number of criteria, and it can differ from one person to another within the same space. Thus, controlling and predicting thermal comfort in buildings is essential when designing impactful space-conditioning systems and building fabrics (both internal and external). Furthermore, poorly designed and installed mechanical systems, for example, air ventilation, can directly affect the thermal comfort of people in office buildings, schools, theaters, sports centers, and other types of commercial and residential buildings. In addition, they can generate serious durability problems.

It is also well-known that optimized configurations of thermal insulation and thermally massive components can help to store heat within the building structure and mitigate temperature fluctuations in the indoor air temperature. This heat storing capacity of building materials helps to achieve thermal comfort for occupants by providing time delays in transferring exterior thermal loads and mitigating peak temperature. Hence, choosing appropriate building materials can largely impact the level of comfort within buildings. Sometimes, this can lead to notable energy savings or the integration of buildings, renewable energy sources and e-mobility with the electric power grid. Furthermore, sustainable heating and cooling with thermal energy storage systems in buildings can be achieved in many different ways, including through passive systems in building envelopes, phase change materials in building materials and active mechanical systems, surface radiation control technologies, sorption systems, seasonal heat storage, etc.

Dr. Jan Kosny, the Guest Editor of this Special Issue, invites researchers, designers, and industrial specialists to share their new ideas, research data, and technology developments in fields related to thermal comfort.

Prof. Dr. Jan Kośny
Dr. David W. Yarbrough
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2600 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.