Sensitivity analyses of convective and diffusive driving potentials on combined heat air and mass transfer in hygroscopic materials

ABSTRACT

The focus of this paper was to examine the contribution of two key mechanisms—moisture convection and diffusion–on heated air and moisture transfer in porous building envelopes and to define the validity of the sub-models. A numerical simulation was performed and is focused on the one-dimensional problem for drying test boundary conditions. Thereafter, a detailed parametric analysis was carried out in order to investigate the influence of typical nondimensional parameters. Results show that convection is a prominent driving potential with respect to the diffusion process when the hygric state is stable between the environment and the envelope.