Author: 

Dr. Fawaz Noman

Mechanical workshops are considered as important buildings in faculty of engineering. It is a place for the students and teachers to get practical experiences and activities. Thermal comfort is an essential requirement in most occupied spaces because it affects the productivity, health and thermal satisfaction of the occupants. Natural ventilation, which may provide occupants with good indoor thermal comfort, and reduce energy costs, has become an important sustainable strategy in building designs. Most of the mechanical workshop buildings in countries with a hot and humid climate use a combination of natural ventilation and electrical fans are commonly used as a space cooling method to provide thermal comfort to the occupants. This article presents the results of a field measurement study that was conducted on the mechanical workshop building which is locat-ed in Faculty of Engineering, University of Aden, Yemen. The purpose of study is to investigate of the inside temperature to arrive comfortable condition of the Mechanical Workshop Building un-der the present ventilation system. The measurements were recorded within duration of one year, starting from October 2021 to September 2022 on the middle of months. The measured values were then compared to the corresponding limit as specified in the ASHRAE Standard-55. It was found that the inside temperature at the selected locations of the mechanical workshop building exceed the respective upper limits as recommended in the ASHRAE Standard-55. This shows that the existing air ventilation method via the use of natural ventilation and electrical fans in the me-chanical workshop building are not able to provide an adequate level of thermal comfort to the occupants for all the stipulated months. Therefore, an alternative ventilation method is needed to improve the thermal comfort inside the Mechanical Workshop building.