EXPLORING THE PREFERRED TEMPERATURE ON OCCUPANTS THERMAL COMFORT IN THE HUMID TROPICS

Harimi Djamila

Abstract: A field stud has been carried out in naturally ventilated residences in east Malaysia for the prediction and evaluation of the indoor comfort temperature using various methods and rigorous statistical analysis. The neutral temperature was predicted in our previous publication. The present paper aims to predict and examine the validity and reliability of the preferred temperature in naturally ventilated residential buildings. The preferred temperature was found to be lower than the neutral temperature by no less than 30C. The predicted indoor preferred temperature was assessed and compared with the results of other investigations carried out mostly in the humid tropics. We observed that the estimated preferred temperature was at the extreme lower of the recorded indoor temperatures; In fact this was seldom recorded. When validating the prediction, we observed that this situation also occurred in another large scale study carried out in the humid tropic of Indonesia. Therefore, the reliability of the prediction was addressed. Concluding remarks for future works investigations were suggested.

Keywords: Thermal Comfort, Preferred Temperature, Humid Tropics, Field Study

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0304018