Paper Conference

Proceedings of eSim 2002: 2nd Conference of IBPSA-Canada

     

BENCHMARKING OF THE ADVANCED HYGROTHERMAL MODEL-hygIRC WITH MID SCALE EXPERIMENTS

Wahid Maref, Michael Lacasse, M. Kumar Kumaran, Michael Swinton

Abstract: Recent research in the field of assessment of hygrothermal response has focused on either laboratory experimentation or modelling, but less work has been reported in which both aspects are combined. Indeed, it is generally acknowledged that assessing the hygrothermal performance of building envelope systems is both expensive and time consuming. Such type of studies can potentially offer useful information regarding the benchmarking of models and related methods to assess hygrothermal performance of wall assemblies. This paper focuses on the use of an advanced hygrothermal model to assess the hygrothermal response of various components in woodframe wall assemblies when subjected to nominally steady-state environmental conditions. A comparison is made of results obtained from the computer model simulations to those derived from tests on mid scale specimens in controlled laboratory measurements. The experimental results were subsequently used to help benchmark the model. Specifically, hygIRC was implemented, in this series of simulations, to assess the drying rate of various combinations of sheathing membrane in close contact with wood-based sheathing. The overall agreement between experimental and simulated results is very good in terms of the shape of the drying curve and the time taken to reach equilibrium moisture content.
Paper:
esim2002_3b-4