A full-scale experimental set-up for evaluating the moisture buffer effects of porous material

The objective of this work is to present a full-scale experimental apparatus to evaluate the hygroscopic inertia of porous building materials, whose principle is based on measurements of the changes in a mass of a porous material when its neighboring environment is subjected to daily cyclic variation of relative humidity. Results in terms of the moisture buffer value index (MBV) for a light weight wood construction material are also presented and discussed, considering two sample sizes: a cubic cell with 24 m2 of mass exchange surface area and a smaller one with a circular exposed area of approximately 0.08 m².