Evaluation of Indoor Air Condition of University Building in Tropics using Building Thermal Modeling

The Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) System is a significant energy user of a building. The main factor that affects the energy consumption of the HVAC system is indoor air temperature, which also will affect the relative humidity. Therefore, monitoring indoor air temperature and relative humidity is not only useful for controlling the energy consumption, but also important to maintain the comfort condition of the occupant. This research aims to model a thermal building condition in classrooms and then validate the model by the data from a monitoring system. Firstly, thermal building simulation was developed in order to find the profile of indoor air temperature and relative humidity of a classroom. Afterward, the results of thermal building modeling were compared to the reading of the monitoring system. It is found that the results of thermal building simulation and the reading of the monitoring system show a similar trend.