REVISITING FANGER'S THERMAL COMFORT MODEL USING MEAN BLOOD PRESSURE AS A BIO-MARKER: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

Air conditioning of a building aims to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor
air quality to its occupants. Fanger's heat balance model led to the formulation of the
predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage dissatisfied (PPD) for rating
thermal comfort in the buildings. The authenticity of PMV/PPD model has been
questioned by several studies. ASHRAE tried to bridge the gap by introducing the
adaptive approach. It opens the debate for revisiting the main parameters in PMV
thermal comfort model. Primary field studies revealed that the misinterpretation of
estimated parameter (activity level) deviates the PMV vote from the actual subjects'
vote. The main objective of this research is to correlate the biomarker 'mean blood
pressure' with the 'activity level', to improve the prediction level of the PMV model.