Localized heating for visitor corridor within site museum using radiant floor heating and air curtain system

A site museum is a special public building for preserving and exhibiting immovable historical sites. It typically features a large-space layout and requires high energy consumption for HVAC system. Its interior space can be categorized into three sections: visitor corridor, relics preservation area and a non-occupied space. Of these, the visitors corridor accounts for only about 20% of the total indoor space. Conventional air conditioning (AC) systems typically heat the entire exhibition hall, resulting in excessive energy consumption and inadequate thermal comfort for visitors. In this research, by using an air curtain to separate the visitor corridor from the large space exhibition hall, an underfloor heating system is proposed to provide local heating for the visitor corridor. An experimental exhibition hall and local heating system for the visitor corridor were constructed based on the spatial characteristics of Emperor Qin's Mausoleum Site Museum. A series of tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the local heating system and consequently the system parameters were optimised. The results showed that the environmental parameters within the visitor corridor were regulated to temperatures of 18-22°C, relative humidity>30%, air velocity <0.3m/s, and a temperature difference of <2°C within the human-occupied space, providing a stable environment that meets the thermal comfort needs of visitors for short-term stays, and significantly reducing energy consumption compared to traditional HVAC systems and advancing energy conservation and emission reduction efforts. The proposed system provides an efficient and energy-saving strategy for local environmental control of visitor areas in large on-site exhibition halls.