Indoor thermal comfort control based on fuzzy logic

Control and monitoring of indoor thermal conditions represent crucial tasks for people’s satisfaction in working and living spaces. In the first part of the chapter we address thermal comfort issues in a working office scenario. Among all standards released, predicted mean vote (PMV) is the international index adopted to define users thermal comfort conditions in moderate environments. In order to optimize PMV index we designed a novel fuzzy controller suitable for commercial Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. However in a residential scenario it would be extremely expensive to gather real time measures for PMV computation. Indeed in the second part of the chapter we introduce a novel approach for residential multi room comfort control based on humidex index. A fuzzy logic controller is introduced to reach and maintain comfort conditions in a living environment. Both control systems have been experimentally tested in the central east coast of Italy. Temperature regulation performances of both approaches have been compared with those of a classical PID based thermostat. © 2016, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.