COMPARING EFFECTS OF BLADED AND BLADELESS FANS ON THERMAL COMFORT IN RESIDENTIAL ROOMS

Abstract

This comparison experiment studies how bladeless tower fans fare against bladed pedestal fans in terms of how they affect the thermal comfort of occupants of a room in a residential unit in Singapore. It also aims to study how preference of a particular thermal environment will affect thermal perception. Experiment control to take readings of wind speed, air temperature and humidity in natural ventilated environment was conducted. Participants were seated in front of both fans at 3 different wind speed settings for 15 minutes each while average wind speed and air temperature was recorded. After 15 minutes, they were asked to fill in a thermal comfort questionnaire. The experiment was repeated in both naturally ventilated and air-conditioned environments.

Both bladed and bladeless fans performed well in natural ventilation whilst only bladeless fans performed well in air-conditioned environments. Natural ventilated environments require higher wind speed to attain thermal comfort whereas air-conditioned environments require low wind speeds to remain within thermal comfort. Preferences for certain thermal conditions were found to affect thermal perception. Further studies with greater sample size should be done to confirm this. Additional studies to study how bladeless fans affect thermal comfort from different angles can be conducted.