Thermal Comfort, Models and Simulation

Since people spend most of their lives in the home, in a vehicle or at the workplace, new issues regarding thermal comfort, indoor air quality and the necessary technical systems are constantly arising. To evaluate potential solutions, we develop mathematical-physical models and integrate them into modern simulation tools. This allows us to assess the energy efficiency and user acceptance of air conditioning and ventilation concepts. We take into account aspects such as airflows in rooms and thermal radiation control, as well as the design of the corresponding systems and optimized operating and control strategies. In doing so, we implement building information models (BIM), semantic database structures (ontologies) and statistical modeling approaches (machine learning). To investigate room ventilation concepts in detail, we use our very own Indoor Environment Simulation Suite (IESS) developed at Fraunhofer IBP. With this tool, based on zonal flow simulations we can examine 3-D models of interiors to determine not only ventilation efficiency, climate comfort and air humidity but also the concentration of pollutants from different sources (CO₂).