| Summary: |
The building moisture problem has always been of great interest to the scientific community, and is nowadays one of the most important causes of building pathologies. It is therefore of the most importance the development of studies to define qualitative and quantitative rules for the design of buildings components that contribute to moisture control.
This research project will increase the knowledge on two parts of the overall hygrothermal behaviour of buildings that are particularly relevant for the Portuguese reality. It's our intention to evaluate the contribution of hygroscopic inertia to the hygrothermal behaviour of buildings and make a new approach to coupled moisture and salt transport in rising damp situations. These two issues were joined together in this project because of the proximity of the applied physics and the coincidence on much of the modelling and experimental work.
The project's tasks include literature review, modelling, experiments and applications. The literature review will define the starting point of the work and set its limits. The modelling of the whole building heat, air and moisture, HAM-response will increase the knowledge on the hygrothermal behaviour of buildings and supply a simulation tool to support the project's applications. The laboratory experiments can supply material data to the model, validate it and generate information for the applications. On the practical applications task, information, design methodologies and tools will be developed, aiming the technology transfer from the other tasks to practitioners and the common public.
The development of a whole building HAM-response model that includes hygroscopic inertia effect and and salt and moisture transport coupled on rising damp will be used in a software simulation tool. Existing software modules that deal with parts of this modelling problem will be used and this team's work will concentrate on developing the routines related to the iss  |
Summary
The building moisture problem has always been of great interest to the scientific community, and is nowadays one of the most important causes of building pathologies. It is therefore of the most importance the development of studies to define qualitative and quantitative rules for the design of buildings components that contribute to moisture control.
This research project will increase the knowledge on two parts of the overall hygrothermal behaviour of buildings that are particularly relevant for the Portuguese reality. It's our intention to evaluate the contribution of hygroscopic inertia to the hygrothermal behaviour of buildings and make a new approach to coupled moisture and salt transport in rising damp situations. These two issues were joined together in this project because of the proximity of the applied physics and the coincidence on much of the modelling and experimental work.
The project's tasks include literature review, modelling, experiments and applications. The literature review will define the starting point of the work and set its limits. The modelling of the whole building heat, air and moisture, HAM-response will increase the knowledge on the hygrothermal behaviour of buildings and supply a simulation tool to support the project's applications. The laboratory experiments can supply material data to the model, validate it and generate information for the applications. On the practical applications task, information, design methodologies and tools will be developed, aiming the technology transfer from the other tasks to practitioners and the common public.
The development of a whole building HAM-response model that includes hygroscopic inertia effect and and salt and moisture transport coupled on rising damp will be used in a software simulation tool. Existing software modules that deal with parts of this modelling problem will be used and this team's work will concentrate on developing the routines related to the issues mentioned above.
On the experiments task, the most important contribution will come from the development of a laboratory prototype that will validate the numerical model and evaluate the moisture buffering capacity of rendering materials and their contribution to the building's hygroscopic inertia. Existing facilities will be improved and used on the validation of software modules related to coupled salt and moisture transport. Material properties relevant to the models will be determined. The project's applications will supply a solution for several pathologies recurrent in Portuguese buildings, based on low energy consumption and therefore aiming for sustainability. |