A Novel Methodology to Assess Mean Radiant Temperature in Complex Outdoor Spaces

The increasing complexity of modern architectural geometries emphasizes the need for more accurate simplified calculations of comfort analysis in architectural design. Such computations often require to solve complicated equations, among which the calculation of Mean Radiant Temperature (MRT) is notable. The goal of this paper is to propose a fast reliable technique, named Numerous Vectors (NV), to calculate MRT even in the presence of complex geometries. Considering the area, orientation, and distance of different radiant geometries, the process suggests an innovative method to find the view factor by projecting the surrounding surfaces on a unit sphere as the human body. Rather than separately computing the values of view factors for individual radiant surfaces, the method determines the proportion of the radiation from all surfaces by a single-step process. The NV method can also be used for the calculation of multiple parameters involved in MRT such as solar and atmospheric radiations. The proposed process is much faster than conventional methods available to calculate the view factors and the results are proved to be in a good agreement with analytical data.