Ventilation and occupant satisfaction win medals

Prizes recognise the highest-rated papers of 2017 in BSERT

Roderic Bunn and Junli Zhou

Roderic Bunn and Junli Zhou

Two technical papers have been recognised for their research into single-sided natural ventilation and long-term study of occupant satisfaction.

Roderic Bunn and Ljiljana Marjanovic-Halburd won the Carter Bronze Medal for Comfort signatures: How long-term studies of occupant satisfaction in office buildings reveal ongoing performance. This looked at occupant surveys, which are often used as a benchmark for checking whether a building has met its desired outcomes during a soft landings handover, and the little-known, longer-term occupant perception.

The research covered two case studies of long-term occupant surveys over periods of between three and 21 years. This time-series approach enabled an exploration of the relationship between occupants’ perceptions of comfort and productivity, and the buildings’ physical and functional characteristics. The longitudinal analysis has generated insights into trends in building performance that do not emerge from single surveys, and provided evidence of the key factors for ensuring long-term occupant satisfaction.

The Napier Shaw Bronze Medal was won by Dr Junli Zhou, Cheng Ye, Yan Hu, Dr Hassan Hemida, Prof Guoqiang Zhang and Dr Wei Yang for their paper Development of a model for single-sided, winddriven natural ventilation in buildings. This looked to develop a model for predicting total flowrate of single-sided natural ventilation in buildings due to wind pressure. It found that the total flowrate is mainly caused by pulsating flow when the area of the opening is small, but by mean flow in the case of large openings.

The Bronze Medals are awarded annually by CIBSE to celebrate high-quality research in building services. They are given to the highestrated papers of the year published in Building Services Engineering Research and Technology (BSERT). The prizes will be presented at the CIBSE President’s dinner in October.

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■ Read the summary of the Napier Shaw Bronze Medal-winning here.