Clothing-insulation diversity and shared thermal feasibility in Gulf cooling-dominated buildings

Cooling-dominated Gulf buildings routinely accommodate occupants wearing clothing ensembles with substantially different insulation levels, yet conventional thermal comfort methods evaluate only individual acceptability and provide no mechanism for assessing whether thermally diverse groups can simultaneously share the same indoor environment. This study introduces a shared thermal feasibility framework for clothing-diverse Gulf spaces. Five representative ensembles spanning intrinsic clothing-insulation values of I c l = 0.45 − − 1.27 clo were evaluated using PMV-based psychrometric analysis, and the Intersection Feasibility Index (IFI) was developed to quantify the normalized overlap between pairwise operative-temperature comfort bands. The framework included humidity and air-movement analyses, Monte Carlo uncertainty propagation, and parametric sensitivity analysis. Results showed reduced compatibility with increasing clothing-insulation divergence. A linear approximation suggested a preliminary, model-specific transition near Δ I c l = 0.73 clo (95% bootstrap interval: 0.60–0.81 clo), with a one-factor deterministic sensitivity range of 0.66–0.89 clo. The representative Western-light (W-Light) and Gulf female summer (GF-S) ensembles exhibited no shared feasible interval under the reference condition or across the evaluated humidity and air-speed ranges. Elevated humidity and increased air speed further reduced compatibility for selected ensemble pairs under the evaluated PMV assumptions. The framework formally distinguishes individual thermal comfort from shared thermal compatibility, highlighting a limitation of representative-occupant thermal design in clothing-diverse indoor environments. The study is simulation-based and uses published thermal-manikin data; field validation remains necessary.