APLICAÇÃO DO MODELO DE FANGER NA AVALIAÇÃO DO CONFORTO TÉRMICO DA POPULAÇÃO IDOSA FEMININA

Abstract

Considering the accelerated increase in the number of elderly people in the world population, it is necessary to create conditions for the third age to occur with quality of life, where thermal comfort is fundamental in the contribution of a more human and accessible architecture. The present work intends to contribute to the subject by analysing the application of Fanger’s model to evaluate the thermal comfort of elderly women population in living rooms of two long stay nursing homes in Santa Maria, RS. The target audience considered for this study was elderly women over 60 years old. The environmental variables of air temperature, humidity, globe temperature and air velocity, as well as the human variables of clothing and physical work have been collected. The research also measured the thermal sensation and preference of elderly women by means of questionnaire application, in order to evaluate their thermal perception. After data collection, the analytical comfort sensation (predicted mean vote – PMV) and the predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) were calculated. The data analysis was descriptive and comparative between the field study information and the indices determined by the PMV model. The PMV was compared with the real sensation surveyed from the occupants to verify the mutual relation established between these variables, pointing how the model explains or not the data collected. The results indicate that the PMV is not applicable for the thermal comfort evaluation for the population considered in this study. The findings also showed a tendency for the elderly women to feel warmer than the model estimates.