MONICA: An integrated thermal manikin for simultaneous thermal comfort and occupant-centred IAQ assessment
Abstract
Thermal comfort and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) are two fundamental components of indoor environmental quality that directly influence occupant health, wellbeing, and productivity. However, they are commonly assessed using room-averaged instruments that may not represent the actual occupant exposure. In addition, experiments using thermal manikins, which are instruments that can provide occupant-centred measurements of the indoor conditions, are rarely used to simultaneously assess both components, particularly due to their limitations in measuring both elements at the same time. This study presents the development and validation of MONICA (MONitoring Indoor Comfort and Air quality), a thermal manikin designed for combined thermal comfort and personal pollutant exposure. MONICA incorporates a distributed heating system comprising 71 independently controlled heating segments, a high-resolution surface temperature sensing network, and five integrated multi-sensor pollutant monitoring arrays. The capabilities of the manikin were subsequently demonstrated through experiments conducted in two occupied university classrooms with different ventilation strategies. Equivalent temperature measurements obtained with MONICA followed occupant thermal sensation trends more closely than conventional PMV-based assessment. Pollutant monitoring further showed that the agreement between occupant-centred and room measurements depended on both the pollutant type and ventilation strategy. The experiments also highlighted the trade-off between thermal comfort and IAQ, demonstrating that favourable conditions for one parameter do not necessarily coincide with favourable conditions for the other. The results demonstrate the potential of MONICA as a versatile occupant-centred platform for integrated indoor environmental quality assessment and personal exposure studies, but also highlight the identified limitations and hint at future developments.
Related
- Integrated Analytical Assessment of Edible and Essential Oils: Thermal, Oxidative, Chromatographic and Spectroscopic Characterization
- Risk assessment of insulator contamination in thermal power plants by integrating dynamic physical priors and spatiotemporal heterogeneous graphs
- Application of Vortex Tube for Expansion Device Replacement in R744 Integrated Thermal Management System for Electric Vehicle
- Beyond structural support: Synergizing nanocellulose with MXene, carbon, and MOFs for integrated EMI shielding, thermal management, and solar evaporation
- Integrated Silica-Encapsulated Lauric Acid Phase Change Material into Acid-Activated Geopolymer for Thermal Energy Storage Applications
BibTeX
@article{cernei2026monica,
title = {{MONICA: An integrated thermal manikin for simultaneous thermal comfort and occupant-centred IAQ assessment}},
author = {Alexandru Cernei and Matei-Răzvan Georgescu and Paul Danca and Thomas Fagniez and Frédéric Thevenet and Marie Verriele and Ilinca Nastase},
journal = {Results in engineering},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1016/j.rineng.2026.112675},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05737505v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - MONICA: An integrated thermal manikin for simultaneous thermal comfort and occupant-centred IAQ assessment
AU - Alexandru Cernei
AU - Matei-Răzvan Georgescu
AU - Paul Danca
AU - Thomas Fagniez
AU - Frédéric Thevenet
AU - Marie Verriele
AU - Ilinca Nastase
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
JO - Results in engineering
DO - 10.1016/j.rineng.2026.112675
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05737505v1
AB - Thermal comfort and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) are two fundamental components of indoor environmental quality that directly influence occupant health, wellbeing, and productivity. However, they are commonly assessed using room-averaged instruments that may not represent the actual occupant exposure. In addition, experiments using thermal manikins, which are instruments that can provide occupant-centred measurements of the indoor conditions, are rarely used to simultaneously assess both components, particularly due to their limitations in measuring both elements at the same time. This study presents the development and validation of MONICA (MONitoring Indoor Comfort and Air quality), a thermal manikin designed for combined thermal comfort and personal pollutant exposure. MONICA incorporates a distributed heating system comprising 71 independently controlled heating segments, a high-resolution surface temperature sensing network, and five integrated multi-sensor pollutant monitoring arrays. The capabilities of the manikin were subsequently demonstrated through experiments conducted in two occupied university classrooms with different ventilation strategies. Equivalent temperature measurements obtained with MONICA followed occupant thermal sensation trends more closely than conventional PMV-based assessment. Pollutant monitoring further showed that the agreement between occupant-centred and room measurements depended on both the pollutant type and ventilation strategy. The experiments also highlighted the trade-off between thermal comfort and IAQ, demonstrating that favourable conditions for one parameter do not necessarily coincide with favourable conditions for the other. The results demonstrate the potential of MONICA as a versatile occupant-centred platform for integrated indoor environmental quality assessment and personal exposure studies, but also highlight the identified limitations and hint at future developments.
SN - 2590-1230
ER -