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Adaptive Thermal Comfort

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Personal Comfort Systems for Improving Indoor Thermal Comfort and Air Quality

Part of the book series: Indoor Environment and Sustainable Building ((IESB))

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Abstract

Adaptive thermal comfort is one of the approaches to understanding and predicting human thermal comfort in the building environment. Different from the heat balance approach that emphasizes the physical aspects of thermal comfort, the adaptive approach encourages thermally variable solutions, such as climate-responsive and energy-conserving designs, and innovative mechanical systems that allow for personal control, and therefore reduce the energy consumption of the building environment conditioning. This chapter briefly introduces why adaptive thermal comfort can attract so much research attention in the first two decades of the twenty-first century alongside the rational heat balance models. The fundamentals of building occupants’ thermal adaptation were interpreted from three layers, e.g. behavioral adjustment, psychological adaptation, and physiological acclimation. Then the progress in adaptive comfort model development and relevant regulatory documents was summarized. At last, the future challenges and opportunities of adaptive thermal comfort were shortly addressed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Maohui Luo

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  1. Maohui Luo
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Correspondence to Maohui Luo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biosystems, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Faming Wang

  2. School of Energy and Safety Engineering, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin, China

    Bin Yang

  3. School of Public Health, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China

    Qihong Deng

  4. School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Maohui Luo

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Luo, M. (2023). Adaptive Thermal Comfort. In: Wang, F., Yang, B., Deng, Q., Luo, M. (eds) Personal Comfort Systems for Improving Indoor Thermal Comfort and Air Quality. Indoor Environment and Sustainable Building. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0718-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0718-2_2

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-99-0718-2

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