THERMAL ENVIRONMENT CHARACTERISATIONOF A GLASS-COVERED SEMI-OUTDOOR SPACE:COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND ANALYTICAL RESULTS

Many outdoor microclimates can be mitigated by man-made structures that produce semi-outdoor, partially controlled, spaces. In a semi-outdoor setting, the human subject interacts with his thermal environment, which combines air temperature and humidity, wind speed and infrared and solar radiation. However, the application of the thermal comfort concepts to semi-outdoor spaces subjected to natural climate mitigation, like natural air cooling, solar radiation absorption, heat and cooling loads attenuation by thermal capacity, is still relatively scanty investigated. In this paper the results of an experimental investigation intended to characterize a semi-outdoor space are compared with a dynamic thermal simulation under the same climate conditions. The semi-outdoor space is localized in Parma north Italy, and it consists of a marketplace under a large glass roof which is semi-transparent to solar radiation. The results point out that some assumptions which are currently adopted in the simulation of the thermal environment must be carefully verified in the actual situation.