This paper describes a method for measuring nonuniform thermal environments using a new thermal manikin with controlled skin surface temperature. The manikin and its control logic are described, and an equivalent temperature based on the thermal manikin (teq) is proposed and discussed. A method to calculate the PMV index from manikin heat loss is also given.

To calibrate these methods, fundamental data were collected. The manikin-based equivalent temperature (teq) is shown to be effective at accounting for the effects of local heat sources and asymmetrical environmental conditions.

During recent years an increasing amount of attention has been paid to air distribution systems that individually condition the immediate environment of office workers within their workstations. As with task lighting systems, the controls for these "task conditioning" systems are partially or entirely decentralized and under the control of the occupants. Among the primary types of task conditioning systems (floor-, desktop-, and partition-based), floor-based are the most common, having been widely developed and used in South Africa and Europe, and are now gaining acceptance in the United States.

This paper reports the results of recently completed laboratory measurements investigating the thermal performance of a floor-based task conditioning system. The experiments were performed in a controlled environment chamber configured to resemble a modern office space with modular workstation furniture and partitions. Tests were conducted to study the effects of supply volume, supply temperature, supply direction, and heat load levels in the space. In addition to detailed temperature and velocity measurements, a new skin-temperature-controlled thermal manikin was used to evaluate the non-uniform thermal environments produced by the floor-based system, in both sitting and standing positions. Under the low to intermediate supply volumes investigated in this study, the overall performance of the floor-based system resembled that of displacement ventilation systems. Primarily by controlling supply volume the floor-based system can be operated to maintain acceptable thermal comfort in the occupied zone of the building, while at the same time taking advantage of the temperature stratification inherent in displacement flow to achieve savings in space conditioning energy use.

Climate change and the urgency of decarbonizing the built environment are driving technological innovation in the way we deliver thermal comfort to occupants. These changes, in turn, seem to be setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research. This article presents a literature review of major changes, developments, and trends in the field of thermal comfort research over the last 20 years. One of the main paradigm shift was the fundamental conceptual reorientation that has taken place in thermal comfort thinking over the last 20 years; a shift away from the physically based determinism of Fanger’s comfort model toward the mainstream and acceptance of the adaptive comfort model. Another noticeable shift has been from the undesirable toward the desirable qualities of air movement. Additionally, sophisticated models covering the physics and physiology of the human body were developed, driven by the continuous challenge to model thermal comfort at the same anatomical resolution and to combine these localized signals into a coherent, global thermal perception. Finally, the demand for ever increasing building energy efficiency is pushing technological innovation in the way we deliver comfortable indoor environments. These trends, in turn, continue setting the directions for contemporary thermal comfort research for the next decades.