Implementation

This page is part of the Human Thermal Comfort Module (HTCM) documentation. It contains the general structure of the thermal comfort part of the biometeorology module.
For an overview of all HTCM-related pages, see the HTCM main page.

Input data

Thermal comfort is estimated by the biometeorology module in terms of thermal indices. The three thermal indices

• Perceived Temperature (perct*)
• Universal Thermal Climate Index (utci*)
• Physiologically Equivalent Temperature (pet*)

are calculated based on the following input data provided by PALM:

• Potential Temperature (pt)
• Air humidity (q)
• Air current in u-, v-, and w-direction (u, v, w)

Additionally the radiation fluxes

• Shortwave radiation fluxes from and to the sample person (mrtinsw)
• Longwave radiation fluxes from and to the sample person (mrtinlw)

are required from the radiation model.

Integration

Calculations by the thermal comfort part of the biometeorology module are triggered by time integration. For increased performance, thermal indices are only calculated for output timesteps.

In case of time-averaged thermal indices, the input quantities (see above) are averaged by the biometeorology module if PALM is not already averaging the same quantity itself. Thermal indices are, again, only calculated for the respective output timesteps to avoid unnecessary calculations.