Abstract High occupant density and complex airflow organization in classrooms, especially under heating conditions, make issues of thermal discomfort and indoor air quality more pronounced. Simultaneously, the trend of global low-carbon development has raised expectations for energy-efficient ventilation, creating a need to balance thermal comfort, air quality, and energy efficiency in ventilation design. This study proposes an integrated optimization framework aimed at meeting ventilation design for different decision preferences in multi-occupant environments. Firstly, airflow parameters of the system are obtained using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model validated by experiments. Subsequently, based on the CFD data, prediction models for ventilation performance are developed using the response surface methodology and multilayer perceptron model, respectively. Finally, the ventilation performance is optimized based on the NSGA-II and VIKOR methods. The optimal ventilation parameters are determined based on the three proposed optimization schemes to accommodate varying weather conditions and multiple requirements. The results show that compared with the benchmark case, scheme 1 increases the energy utilization coefficient (EUC) by an average of 16.25%; scheme 2 achieves a good trade-off between IAQ and energy efficiency; scheme 3 provides better pollutant control performance. In addition, the proposed NSGA-II-VIKOR method can further improve IAQ while ensuring thermal comfort, with the EUC increasing by an average of 33.1%. The findings provide recommendations for building managers to meet different requirements, promising enhancements in comfort, health, and energy efficiency in multi-occupant environments.
Bai et al. (Wed,) studied this question.