Modelling of heat and moisture transfer in buildings: I. Model program

The overall objective of this work is to develop an accurate model for predicting heat and moisture transfer in buildings including building envelopes and indoor air. The model is based on the fundamental thermodynamic relations. Darcy’s law, Fick’s law and Fourier’s law are used in describing the transfer equations. The resultant nonlinear system of partial differential equations is discretised in space by the finite element method. The time marching scheme, Crank–Nicolson scheme, is used to advance the solution in time. The final numerical solution provides transient temperature and moisture distributions in building envelopes as well as temperature and moisture content for building’s indoor air subject to outdoor weather conditions described as temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation and wind speed. A series measurements were conducted in order to investigate the model performance. The simulated values were compared against the actual measured values. A good agreement was obtained.