The Effect of Probabilistic Window Opening Behavior of Occupants on Adaptive Thermal Comfort (The Case of Courtyard House in Yazd, Bandar Abbas, and Tabriz)

Considering the global energy crisis and the need to reduce energy consumption while providing thermal comfort to occupants, building performance prediction using building simulation programs requires higher accuracy of output data. Therefore, it seems necessary to study the impact of occupant behavior, which is the main source of uncertainty in residential buildings. The traditional courtyard houses, which are recognized as a successful passive house model, respond to different climatic conditions. Therefore, this research focuses on this building type to analyze occupant window opening control scenarios and determine which control works better. For this purpose, several probabilistic controls and their effects on the adaptive thermal comfort of occupants in zones around a central courtyard were compared in the three cities of Yazd, Bandar Abbas, and Tabriz. Energy Plus was used as a simulation program for the application of Grasshopper's energy management system (EMS) along with the Ladybug and Honeybee environmental plugins. The results show that the window control algorithms can increase the adaptive thermal comfort of occupants by 25.7%, 32.2%, and 20.3% in each of the climates of Yazd, Bandar Abbas, and Tabriz cities, respectively. Indoor and outdoor temperature were the most significant variables for opening windows in the warm and cold seasons, respectively.