Field study on elderly people’s adaptive thermal comfort evaluation in naturally ventilated residential buildings in summer

To research the elderly people’s special characters of adaptive thermal comfort in naturally ventilated residential buildings, performs a field study in six elderly care centers and fourteen residential quarters in Chongqing. The results show that in the thermal environment in summer, both the thermal sensation vote and the dissatisfied ratio of the elderly people are relatively lower, while the upper limit of acceptable air temperature range is higher. Adopts the adaptive predicted mean vote (APMV) model to predict the thermal comfort vote and obtains that the suitable value of adaptive coefficient λ for the elderly people is 0.55 in summer. Recommends that the index level I (0<APMV<0.5) should be adopted to evaluate the thermal comfort in apartments for the elderly, and obtains that the acceptable temperature range for the elderly is 22.70 to 27.78 ℃.