The effect of air movement on the heat and moisture characteristics of building constructions

The paper presents the modeling and simulation of 2D heat and moisture transport with and without air movement for a building construction. The research focuses on the effect of air movement through building constructions. Although the typical air movement inside building constructions is quite small (velocity is of order ~10-5 m/s), this research shows it might have much more impact on the moisture characteristic as presumed so far. Our results indicate that especially vapor transport is in our case study very sensitive for air movement. As much as 40% Rh change at the inner surfaces of the building constructions are observed if we take air movement into account. Concerning the simulations tool, it is concluded that the use of the COMSOL Multiphysics software enables and simplifies the research of possible important effects that are not included in other standard heat and moisture simulation tools.