Evaluation of Thermal Comfort in Academic Buildings at Khartoum Locality: A Case Study

Abstract

Nowadays, the number of students in academic buildings indeed increases year by year as a result of the upward trend in population growth. Therefore, providing a comfortable indoor environment, including thermal comfort is necessary for their occupants to achieve better learning performance and reduce health problems. A quantitative analysis is conducted to analyze the thermal comfort of educational buildings in Khartoum State. Indoor and outdoor air temperatures, air speed, relative humidity, and metabolic and clothing rate are the input parameters utilized by the software to assess comfort indexes such as the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) model and adoptive model (AM). The results obtained showed that the indoor thermal conditions of selected educational facilities are not matched with ASHRAE Standard 55, except for the classroom where active cooling was used. Nevertheless, this research found that the students in dry hot climate can tolerate a little bit higher thermal conditions.