Thermal Environment and Thermal Comfort in University Classrooms during the Heating Season

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the effects of indoor thermal environments on human physical and mental health. This paper aimed to study the current status of the thermal environment and thermal comfort in the classrooms of Northeastern University during the heating season. The indoor thermal environment was analyzed with the use of field measurements, a subjective questionnaire, regression statistics, and the entropy weight method. The results show that personnel population density is an important factor affecting the temperature and relative humidity variations in classrooms. The results also show that the temperature and relative humidity in a lecture state are respectively 4.2 °C and 11.4% higher than those in an idle state. In addition, in university classrooms in Shenyang, the actual thermal neutral temperature is 2.5 °C lower than the predicted value of the Predicted Mean Vote. It was found that increasing indoor relative humidity can effectively improve the overall thermal comfort of subjects. Furthermore, the temperature preference of women was higher than that of men. Therefore, when setting the initial heating temperature, the personnel population density and sufficient indoor relative humidity have been identified as the key factors for improving the thermal environment of the classroom.