Thermal and hygric assessment of an inside-insulated brick wall: 2D critical experiment and computational analysis

Abstract

A combined experimental-computational approach is used for the analysis of hygrothermal performance of a brick wall provided with interior thermal insulation system. A 2D laboratory experiment is performed to determine temperature and moisture fields in a characteristic segment of the envelope over a sufficiently long period including cold winter months. Then, a computational model of moisture and heat transport is developed, using an integral two-phase balance equation capable of distinguishing between the particular phases of water and an enthalpy-based heat balance equation. A 2D computational representation of the experiment is used for model calibration and identification of unknown parameters, resulting in a very good agreement of experimental and calculated fields, with R 2 between 0.9687 and 0.9888. The calibrated model is subsequently used for a long-term hygrothermal assessment of the studied detail to demonstrate the functionality of the interior thermal insulation system, as well as the applicability of the developed model.

Computational Prediction of Susceptibility to Biofilms Growth: Two-Dimensional Analysis of Critical Construction Details

“…The measured profiles were then compared to those obtained computationally, being calibrated by adjusting the heat and moisture exchange coefficients within the admissible range. The very good agreement was shown as the R 2 of selected quantities observed was between 0.9687 and 0.9888 [44].…”

A Method for Rapid Evaluation of Thermal Performance of Wall Assemblies Based on Geographical Location

“…Both tools were developed at Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague. HMS has been successfully used and validated in the recent past [32]. Each wall assembly was discretized from 29 to 41 nodes depending on its thickness and finite element method was applied.…”

Numerical simulation of degradation of porous building materials caused by freeze-thaw cycles

“…For porous building materials, Künzel model [5] is very popular. In paper [7], the original Künzel model was modified. The heat balance equation is in the form dH dT…”

“…where w is the water density (kg/m 3 ), w is the volumetric moisture content (m 3 /m 3 ), D w is the moisture diffusivity (m 2 /s), D g (s) is the global moisture transport function which was defined in [7] in the form…”