The relation between occupant’s mood state and thermal sensation

Abstract

Thermal comfort is mainly evaluated by the Fanger’s Predicted Mean Vote/Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PMV/PPD) method and adaptive thermal comfort approaches. PMV/PPD method takes four environmental (such as indoor air temperature, relative humidity, mean radiant temperature and air velocity) and two personal parameters (basic clothing insulation and metabolic rate) into account for calculations. On the other hand, adaptive approach adds human behaviours to the thermal comfort models. However, none of these models includes the effect of the mood state of the occupants on thermal sensation. To this aim, this study investigates the relationship between occupant’s mood state and thermal sensation as a case study. Pre-test-Post-test Control (PPC) experimental design is conducted on the students in a university study hall in Turkey. Profile of Mood States (POMS) is used to examine the effect of mood state on the thermal sensation while the Actual Mean Vote (AMV) is obtained via developed mobile application. Simultaneously, the PMV is calculated in order to obtain the difference from the AMV. The results showed that there is a strong relationship between the mood state and thermal sensation. The outcome of this study would enlighten the HVAC engineers and specialists in order to understand the gap between PMV and AMV caused by the mood state.