Experimental study on performance of different local radiant cooling schemes

Energy consumption from building cooling is critical for the development of nearly-zero energy building. The indoor zone control of local cooling strategy has been proposed to address this problem. In this study, the application performance of different layout scheme of local radiant cooling was experimentally investigated to explore the optimum design strategy. A series of field experiments were conducted under eight layout schemes of the local radiant cooling considered height, horizontal installation zone, and area of the radiant terminal. The obtained results indicate that in the personnel activity zone (below 2.0 m), local radiant cooling can satisfy the thermal comfort requirements of the occupant. The installation zone has an obvious influence on the room thermal characteristics, whereas the influence from the area was limited. The thermal stability and uniformity of the indoor environment can be improved by modifying the layout of the low and outer zone for the radiant terminal. Increasing the area of the radiant panel is inefficient for the improvement of room thermal characteristics and indoor thermal comfort. The main ranges of the cooling capacity are 115-125 W/m2 for different layout forms of the local radiant terminal and the cooling capacity can be increased by 7%. The layout scheme for the radiant terminal with the outer and low zone can effectively improve the stability of the terminal cooling capacity. Results suggested that the layout scheme of both outer and low zone for the local radiant terminal is crucial to improve the thermal comfort and cooling efficient.