Human perception of local air movement in the tropics

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to investigate if Personalized Ventilation (PV) is applicable to the Tropics, and how the people in the Tropics perceive local air movement with short-term (15-minute) and long-term (90-minute) exposure. A subject-centred intervention approach was adopted for this study.This study has three independent parts. The first study showed that in the Tropics, PV system can significantly enhance occupantsa?? thermal comfort and perceived air quality and can achieve substantial energy savings compared with mixing ventilation.In the second study, the findings suggest that the subjects prefer air movement to a certain extent. A model of percentage dissatisfied (preferring less air movement) was developed for quantifying dissatisfied percentage.In the last study, it is found that the subjects were almost settled in steady state of thermal sensation after about an hour. The optimum velocity decreased as time passed and relatively stabilized towards the end of the 90 minutes' occupation.