Thermal Comfort in Bus Cabins: A Review of Parameters and Numerical Investigation

Review studies regarding the thermal comfort of bus cabins haven't been found in the literature. Thus, this investigation's objective is to analyze the parameters of thermal comfort that could be subject to modeling in bus cabins. The proposed analysis comprises a brief review of the parameters considered relevant in the standardized thermal comfort models and the survey of these parameters in research directed to the bus environment. To achieve that, searches were conducted on the literature databases Emerald, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Scopus, employing the method of systematic review Ordinatio to find review and research papers in two scopes: the first crossed the keyword bus with the terms Predicted Percentage Dissatisfied, Predicted Mean Vote, Thermal Comfort Model, Thermal Comfort, Thermal Discomfort, and Thermal Stress, as well as the abbreviations PPD and PMV; the second combined the keywords automobile and vehicular with the same terms related to thermal comfort as the first scope. The results identified fifteen papers on thermal comfort in buses, three of which investigated the drivers and that only approached the parameter of air temperature quantitatively. In contrast, passenger studies were more complete because they analyzed all the important parameters. Therefore, this paper concludes that, the researches directed to bus passengers are more grounded in terms of thermal comfort parameters and that although driver studies have their merits, they did not sufficiently represent the complexities of these parameters and, taking that into account, this investigation will function as a guide for future studies of this nature.