RESEARCH ARTICLE


Field Survey on Human Thermal Comfort Reports in Air-Conditioned Offices in Taiwan



Ruey Lung Hwang1, *, Ming-Jen Cheng 2
1 Department of Occupational Safety and Health, China Medical University, No.91 Hsueh-Shih Road,Taichung, Taiwan.
2 Department of Architecture, Feng-Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan


Article Metrics

CrossRef Citations:
10
Total Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 798
Abstract HTML Views: 2218
PDF Downloads: 1157
Total Views/Downloads: 4173
Unique Statistics:

Full-Text HTML Views: 410
Abstract HTML Views: 1281
PDF Downloads: 833
Total Views/Downloads: 2524



Creative Commons License
© Hwang and Cheng

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

Correspondence: * Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Occupational Safety and Health, China Medical University, No.91 Hsueh-Shih Road,Taichung, Taiwan. E-mail: hwangrl@mail.cmu.edu.tw


Abstract

Field experiments, conducted in 29 air-conditioned offices, used survey questionnaires and physical measurements to investigate workers’ subjective thermal responses and comfort perception. A total of 650 individuals participated in the field study. The thermal neutrality and thermal preference of subjects occurred at 25.6°C and 24.1°C respectively. Responses from those subjects suggest a comfort temperature range is 23.8–27.5ºC, that shifts to slightly warmer temperatures by about 0.5ºC as comparing to comfort zone recommended in ASHRAE standard 55. Responses from subjects also indicate that people in Taiwan have a leniency toward the humidity guideline in ASHRAE standard 55, due to acclimate to the humid climate. The findings were compared with the similar studies in hot-humid climate.

Keywords: Thermal comfort, air-conditioned offices, field survey.