ANÁLISE DO CONFORTO TÉRMICO DE ESTUDANTES UNIVERSITÁRIOS QUANDO SUBMETIDOS À VARIAÇÃO DA TEMPERATURA DO AR

Abstract

Teaching environments are places where students and teachers consume much of their daily routine, and existing thermal conditions influence the perception of comfort and can impact performance. This situation indicates the need to evaluate the thermal conditions of these sites in search of environmental optimization. Therefore, the general objective of this work is to evaluate the thermal comfort of university students in a teaching environment with Video Display Terminal - VDT located in the city of João Pessoa when submitted to the variation of air temperature. In addition, it aims to understand statistically how the variation of the air temperature impacts on the thermal perception of the occupants; and finally, to estimate a zone of comfort based on the users' responses. For this, an experiment was carried out in three days, in which three conditions were proposed by fixing the air temperature: cold discomfort; comfort; and heat discomfort. On the days that the research was conducted, the environmental variables (temperature and humidity of the air, radiant temperature and wind velocity) were evaluated for the estimation of the thermal sensation using the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index. Subsequently, the data were tabulated and generalized linear models were used to evaluate the influence of the air temperature on the thermal perception; the Wilcox test and confidence interval to estimate the comfort zone based on users' thermal perception. Through the analysis of the results it was possible to notice that the normative index (PMV) was not able to predict the thermal perception of the users. In addition, it was identified that the 1 ° C increase in air temperature caused the chance of discomfort to increase by 18.20%. Finally, the estimated comfort zone varied around 23°C.