| Affiliations: | DeBakey Executive Research Leadership Program |
| Project Leader: | Hussein Al Jebaei husseinaljebaei@tamu.edu Construction Science |
| Faculty Mentor: | Ashrant Aryal, Ph.D. |
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Meeting Times:
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TBD |
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Team Size:
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3 |
| Open Spots: | 0 |
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Special Opportunities:
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The students will be considered for co-authorship on publications depending on the level of contribution. They will also be considered for becoming a full member of Dr. Aryal’s research group depending on performance
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Team Needs:
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For Building energy modeling, programming skills in Python are required. For building software, knowledge in BIM (Revit) is required. Please include your CV when reaching out |
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Description:
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Personalized Comfort Systems (PCS) such as fans, heaters, heating and cooling chairs, personal ventilation terminals, etc. have shown to improve occupant satisfaction by providing local control of the thermal environment. PCS devices extend the range of comfortable temperatures and enable the HVAC systems to be operated at a wider temperature range, which might lead to overall energy savings. However, the comfort and energy-saving potential of PCS devices have not been well understood. This project aims to understand the comfort and energy consequences of using PCS devices to extend HVAC temperature setpoints in office buildings in different climates. The results are expected to improve our understanding of how occupant-centric control of the thermal environment using PCS devices might improve occupant satisfaction and reduce the energy consumption of office buildings in different climates. In Spring 2022, this project focused on developing hardware prototypes that enable automatic control of PCS. Continuation of the project resumes in Fall 2022, while the focus on one end will rely on building software through developing the BIM model for Francis Hall (Department of Construction Science). On another end the focus will be on building energy simulation software, and the scope of work is to develop Python scripts that automatically modify input files |