ESTUDO DE CONFORTO TÉRMICO EM SALAS DE AULA VENTILADAS NATURALMENTE NO CLIMA QUENTE E ÚMIDO

Abstract

It is important to understand the factors that influence students’ comfort inside classrooms, as in these environments users develop many cognitive processes. Since there is a small amount of research on the topic of children’s discomfort in the Northeast of Brazil, the present study analyzes the perception and sensation of thermal comfort in municipal schools in the city of João Pessoa, Paraíba, having had as participants 129 primary school students aged between 8 and 11 years old. The research’s methodology consisted in measuring environmental variables (air temperature, average radiating temperature, relative air humidity, air speed), while applying questionnaires to the children. The field research, carried out in August 2018, covered two municipal schools and classrooms in which the natural ventilation was the adopted strategy to achieve users thermal comfort. Regarding the results, on one hand, we observed the average temperature of 28,78°C, a condition in which 45,53% of the students reporting discomforted by heat. On the other hand, the students which reported thermal neutrality (31, 71%) were placed in thermal conditions ranging from 27,10°C and 30,00°C – demonstrating that, concurrently, there is a tolerance for higher temperatures. The study emphasizes the divergence between the real votes of the students in comparison with the Adaptive Model of ASHRAE, and also, the occurrence of different votes of thermal sensation in the same air temperature ranges.