Articles
Environmental comfort
When dealing with environmental comfort, building simulations are useful to predict the time trends of dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, air velocity and possibly pollutant concentration in indoor and outdoor spaces. In this case, building simulations are frequently performed with the same software tools that are used to estimate the energy performance, but they are conducted under “free running” conditions, i.e. without considering any mechanical systems able to control the above parameters.
Then, the results of the building simulations must be post-processed through suitable tools that can assess a series of comfort parameters and indicators, according to International Standards that integrate well-known comfort theories, such as ANSI ASHRAE Standard 55-2020 and EN Standard 16798-1:2019.
The most commonly used tools to simulate environmental comfort and calculate the most relevant comfort indicators are listed and described at the following link:
https://www.ibpsa-italy.org/en/software-en/environmental-comfort-en.html