Coupling moisture transport in air flows and porous materials using CFD

Hendrik-Jan Steeman, Department of Flow, Heat and Combustion Mechanics, Ghent University-UGent, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41 9000 Gent, Belgium; Hendrikjan.Steeman@ugent.be, www.floheacom.ugent.be Arnold Janssens, PhD, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University-UGent, Jozef Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Gent, Belgium; Arnold.Janssens@ugent.be, www.architectuur.ugent.be Michel De Paepe, PhD, Department of Flow, Heat and Combustion Mechanics, Ghent University-UGent, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41 9000 Gent, Belgium; Michel.Depaepe@ugent.be, www.floheacom.ugent.be KEYWORDS: HAM, CFD, model, porous material. SUMMARY: Modelling local moisture content in objects and walls inside buildings requires the knowledge of the interaction of the material with the local indoor climate. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used to model the local climate and is currently already used to model heat exchange at the interface of air and porous materials. In this paper a coupled CFD-material model is presented which is capable of modelling non-isothermal transient moisture exchange between air and porous materials. The coupled model integrates a 2 or 3D heat and moisture transport model for porous materials in a commercial CFD solver. A verification and validation study of the new model results in an excellent agreement between simulations on the one hand and analytical reference solutions and experiments on the other hand.

1. Introduction
The use of numerical models for heat and moisture transfer in building components is becoming increasingly popular. Numerical simulation allows for an accurate analysis of the hygric and thermal performance of building components. Yet to obtain realistic results it is eminent that realistic boundary conditions are provided to the model. In a recent paper Janssen et al. describe the integration of atmospheric boundary conditions in a numerical heat and moisture model (Janssen, 2007). As boundary conditions such as wind driven rain are highly variable in space and time Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used in the latter paper to simulate the outdoor environment and generate (part of) the boundary conditions. If the interest of a study lies in simulating the local hygrothermal response of building components or objects facing the indoor air, a strong coupling between the air and the porous materials can occur. Unlike the outdoor environment, which is independent of the situation in the building component, the temperature and relative humidity of the indoor air are influenced by the interaction with the building components. Hence in this situation it is no longer sufficient to pass information from the CFD model to the hygrothermal model, but a two-way coupling between both models is necessary. Recently several models which feature a two way coupling between CFD and a hygrothermal material model have been developed. These models can be divided in two categories: the directly coupled models and the indirectly coupled models. Directly coupled models are those models which solve both the fluid domain as the porous material domain with one solver. Models which use an indirect coupling solve the fluid and the porous domain with a different solver and exchange information between both solvers. Examples of indirectly coupled models can be found in (Amissah, 2005) and (Erriguible, 2006). In (Amissah, 2005) a 3D CFD model is coupled to a 1D hygrothermal material model, while in (Erriguible, 2006) a 2D CFD and a 2D hygrothermal material model are coupled. Both these indirectly coupled models use explicit time stepping to link the CFD solver and

the hygrothermal solver as information between the solvers is exchanged once each time step. An example of a direct coupled model can be found in (Mortensen, 2007). In this model a 3D steady state CFD solver was adapted to include the governing equations for heat and moisture transfer in porous materials. The transport equations in the air and the porous material were separated and an algorithm was developed that predicts the moisture flux at the air-material interface and reconciles the water vapour content at both sides of this interface. In this paper a coupled 3D CFD hygrothermal material model is developed that is capable of performing transient simulations. The governing equations in the porous material and the fluid are written in function of the same variables and are solved with the CFD solver. This implies that the continuity at the fluid-material interface will be automatically fulfilled. As the new model is directly coupled and continuous at the material interface no time consuming iteration between two codes is needed. Also the coupling between the fluid and the material is no longer explicit, which allows for larger time steps in the simulation. A detailed verification and validation study of the newly developed model is performed in the second part of the paper.

2. Coupled CFD-material model

The strategy followed here to develop a directly coupled CFD-material model is integrating the governing equations for heat and moisture transport in hygroscopic porous media into the commercial CFD solver Fluent (Fluent Inc., 2006). The advantage of using a commercial CFD solver is that new advances in fluid modelling are integrated in the CFD solver with every new release. In the CFD solver transport equations for heat and moisture transfer in fluids are available. By writing the governing equations for heat and moisture transport in porous media as function of the same transported variables as those used in the CFD solver, source terms, diffusion terms and unsteady terms are obtained to convert the standard CFD heat and moisture transport equations. The CFD solver is used to solve the transport equations in the entire domain (fluid and porous zones) taking into account the changed source terms in the porous zone.

2.1 Heat and moisture transfer in air

In Fluent, the CFD solver used in this paper, heat and moisture transfer in the air can be simulated using the energy and the species transport equations. The air can be modelled as an incompressible fluid in which case the energy and species transport equations can be simplified to:

C p

= . k (T ) cvapT + Lvap g (T ) + v. (T ) t

) )

(1)

= . ( D ( ) ) ( ) + v . ( ) t

(2)

where is the air density, Cp the air thermal capacity, k the thermal conductivity, cvap the thermal capacity of the water vapour, Lvap the latent heat of vaporization, g the water vapour diffusion flux and D the diffusion coefficient of water vapour in air. The transported variables are the temperature T and the mass fraction of water vapour in the air, .

2.2 Heat and moisture transfer in porous materials

2.2.1 Governing equations In the porous material only moisture transport due to water vapour diffusion is considered. The modelled materials are capillary active and are characterized by a sorption curve giving the moisture content w (kg/m) as function of the relative humidity. Heat and moisture transfer is modelled under the assumptions that: No air transfer, no liquid transfer and no radiation heat transfer occurs Moisture storage is independent of temperature The temperature remains below the boiling point

Under these assumptions the moisture transport equation and the heat transport equation can be written in function of and T (Eq. 3-4).

 D dw w RH w RH T = .g + = . ( ) dt RH t RH T t

(3)

dh = . kmat (T ) cvapT + Lvap g dt wliq wvap T mat c + cliqT + cvapT + Lvap = . ( kmat (T ) ) cvapT + Lvap .g t t t

) ) )

(4)

with

h = mat cmat T + cliq wliqT + cvapT + Lvap wvap c = cmat + cliq wliq + cvap wvap

(5) (6)

mat
w

mat

wliq = 1

vap
1

(7)

liq

vap
1
(8)

w wvap =

liq
1

liq

vap

where is the vapour resistance factor, the subscript mat refers to dry material conditions and is the porosity of the material. In the right hand side of Eq. (4) the assumption is made that the energy associated with the water vapour flux is quite constant and can be brought outside the divergence operator. 2.2.2 Conservative implementation Because of the non-linear nature of the transport equations (3) and (4) mass and energy conservation is not guaranteed: e.g. the storage term w RH . RH varies with and is not constant during a time step. To solve this problem Janssen proposed an iterative solution procedure in which the property that has to be conserved is estimated by a truncated Taylor series (Janssen, 2007; Janssen, 2002) This approach proved to be very effective and is implemented here. This approach, together with the segregated solution procedure of the CFD solver, leads to the following discretization of equations (3) and (4):

D w RH t + t , m +1 t +t , m wt +t , m wt + = . ( ) RH t t

(9)

mat c

T t + t , m +1 T t +t , m ht +t , m ht + = . ( kmat (T ) ) + cvapT + Lvap t t

D ) . ( )

(10)

Note that the equations (9) and (10) are written in function of T and .

2.3 Practical implementation in Fluent

In the previous section the differences between the transport equations in the fluid and the porous zone are discussed. In Fluent it is not possible to transform the standard energy and species transport equations into equations (9) and (10). It is however possible to use empty transport equations, so called UDS transport, which can be altered at will. For this reason the standard energy and species transport equations are not used, instead equations (1-2) and (9-10) are implemented in the UDS transport equations.

7.00E-04

6.00E-04

Water vapour density rise (kg/m)

5.00E-04

4.00E-04

3.00E-04

2.00E-04

1.00E-04

0.00E+00 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 x (m) 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1

FIG. 1: Comparison between the increase in water vapour density predicted by the numerical model ( __ ) and the analytical model ( 500s ( ), 5000s (), 20000s (), 200000s () and 500000s ())
5.00E-03 4.50E-03 4.00E-03 3.50E-03 Temperature rise ( C) 3.00E-03 2.50E-03 2.00E-03 1.50E-03 1.00E-03 5.00E-04 0.00E+00 0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 x (m) 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1

FIG. 2: Comparison between the increase in temperature predicted by the numerical model ( __ ) and the analytical model ( 500s ( ), 5000s (), 20000s (), 200000s () and 500000s ())

3. Verification and validation study

3.1 Verification
The aim of the verification study is to check the correct implementation of the equations given in the previous chapter. A test case for which the analytical solution is available, is simulated using the numerical model. Comparison of the analytical and numerical results allow for the assessment of the accuracy of the numerical model. 3.1.1 Test case The considered test case was designed by (Milly, 1982) and represents the one dimensional, coupled diffusion of heat and water vapour in a 10 cm high porous material. Initially the temperature in the material is 20C and the relative humidity is 23.45%. A step change is imposed at the top of the material: the relative humidity changes to 27.11% while the temperature at the top is maintained at 20C. This causes water vapour to diffuse into the porous material and leads to a varying temperature inside the material (due to latent heat release). The bottom of the material is considered to be vapour tight and adiabatic. To obtain an analytical solution for this test case the following assumptions have to be made: (1) the transfer of sensible heat by vapour diffusion and the storage of sensible heat in the liquid water and the water vapour are negligible, (2) the perturbations in temperature and vapour density are so small that the relation between the moisture content w and the relative humidity can be considered linear around the initial state with all other material properties considered constant. If these assumptions are valid the analytical solution developed by (Crank, 1989) can be used to describe the coupled heat and water vapour diffusion. The following material properties are used: w = 4.615RH + 74.261 kg/m; D = 4.37E-6 m/s ; c = 2E6 J/kgK ; kmat = 1.5 W/mK. Note that an extremely high heat capacity c is chosen to guarantee small changes in temperature and hence assure the linear nature of the transport equations. 3.1.2 Results Figure 1 and Figure 2 respectively give the increase of the vapour density and the temperature inside the porous material, as predicted by the analytical and numerical model. Figure 2 shows how the water vapour diffusion into the material triggers a temperature increase which levels out in time under influence of the heat conduction to the surface. The excellent agreement between both models shows that the equations in the numerical model have been correctly implemented and that the interaction between heat and water vapour transport is accurately represented.

3.2 Validation
In the validation study it is checked whether the hygric interaction between the air flow and the porous material simulated with the newly developed model agrees with reality. To this end an experiment for the benchmarking of 1D transient heat and moisture models of hygroscopic materials (Talukdar, 2007; Talukdar, 2008) is simulated. This particular benchmark experiment is well suited for the validation of the new model as the temperature, humidity and velocity of the airflow above the material are accurately controlled. This makes it possible to model the heat and moisture transport in both the air flow and the porous material. 3.2.1 Experiment The experimental set up is elaborately described in (Talukdar, 2007). The test case simulated in this paper is not the case discussed in (Talukdar, 2008), but is a test case developed within the frame of IEA Annex 41(IEA Annex 41, 2008). The most important characteristics of the set up and test case are briefly discussed here. During the experiment conditioned air is sucked through a duct which passes over a porous specimen. This test specimen is placed in an impermeable container with adiabatic walls. A step change in the humidity of the conditioned air is imposed and the resulting temperature and relative humidity change in the porous specimen are measured. The cross section of the duct has a height of 20.5mm. The porous specimen has a height of 37.5mm and a length of 498mm. Temperature and relative humidity sensors are placed inside the porous specimen at a depth of 12.5mm and 25mm.

The porous material used in the validation experiment is gypsum board. Three different experiments were carried out: the response of uncoated gypsum board (Test1), gypsum board coated with 0.1mm acrylic paint (Test2) and gypsum board coated with 0.1mm latex paint (Test3) were measured in the test set up. The material properties (sorption isotherm and vapour resistance factor) of the gypsum board, acrylic paint and latex paint were measured in (IEA Annex 41, 2008) and were used as input for the numerical model. The average velocity of the airflow in the duct is 0.82m/s which corresponds with a Re number of 2000. The test conditions for the three different validation cases are given in Table 1. In all three tests the relative humidity of the air flow is high during the first 24 hours. Next a step change is imposed to the air relative humidity resulting in a low relative humidity. TABLE. 1: Test conditions for the three validation cases Test Used material Initial conditions T (C) 1 uncoated gypsum 23.3 RH (%) 30 Airflow conditions T(C) 23.8 22.5 2 acrylic coated gypsum 24 34.6 23.2 23.2 3 latex coated gypsum 24.1 31.4 23.4 23.4 3.2.2 Model settings The simulations are performed under the assumption of isothermal water vapour transfer: a constant temperature is imposed to the air and the porous material. To model the material properties as accurately as possible 5th order polynomial functions are used for the sorption isotherm and the vapour resistance factor of the gypsum board, acrylic paint and latex paint. The air flow in the duct is assumed to be laminar and to have a hydrodynamically fully developed profile. This is in agreement with measurements performed by (Iskra, 2007). The time step used in the transient simulation is 60s. 3.2.3 Results Figure 3 shows the distribution of the relative humidity in the porous material and the air. In this figure the developing boundary layer for moisture transfer and its effect on the distribution of the relative humidity in the material is clearly visible. RH(%) 71.9 29.6 72.2 30.8 70.9 31.2

FIG. 3:Relative humidity in the porous material (Y<0) and air (Y>0) after 24 hours for Test case1

75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 0 20 40

a)
RH (%)

75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 0 20 40

b)

RH (%)

60

60

time (h)

time (h)

FIG. 4: Comparison of the measured (__) and simulated (_ _) evolution of the average relative humidity for Test1 at a depth of a) 12.5mm b) 25mm

70 65 60

70

a)
RH (%)

65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30

b)

RH (%)

55 50 45 40 35 30 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

10

20

30

40

50

60

time (h)

time (h)

FIG. 5: Comparison of the measured (__) and simulated (_ _) evolution of the average relative humidity for Test2 at a depth of a) 12.5mm b) 25mm

44 42 40

44

a)
RH (%)

42 40 38 36 34 32 30

b)

RH (%)

38 36 34 32 30 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

10

20

30

40

50

60

time (h)

time (h)

FIG. 6: Comparison of the measured (__) and simulated (_ _) evolution of the average relative humidity for Test3 at a depth of a) 12.5mm b) 25mm

In Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6 the evolution of the average relative humidity at a given depth inside the porous material is compared for the numerical model and the experiments. A good agreement is found, especially during the absorption phase. The larger deviations during desorption might be caused by hysteresis in the material. By comparing the latter figures it can be seen that the humidity increase in the gypsum board decreases as the coating becomes more vapour tight (uncoated acrylic paint latex paint). This phenomenon was accurately predicted by the numerical model. The validation cases show that the new model is capable of simulating the hygric response of a porous material to a change in the properties of the air flowing over it.

4. Conclusion
In this paper a coupled CFD - hygrothermal material model is presented. A mass and energy conservative formulation of the heat and moisture transport equations in porous materials is implemented in the commercial CFD solver Fluent, hence assuring a direct coupling between the fluid and the porous zone. A verification of the newly developed model was performed by comparing the model with the analytical solution for a simplified test case. Next experiments for the benchmarking of one dimensional heat and moisture transfer model were simulated. The good agreement between the simulation and the experiment proves the capability of the new model to accurately predict the hygrothermal interaction at the air-material interface.

5. References
Amissah P. K. (2005). Indoor Air Quality - Combining air humidity with construction moisture. Department of Mechanical Engineering. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Crank J. (1989). The mathematics of diffusion. Oxford Science Publications, Oxford. Erriguible A., Bernada F., Couture F. and Roques M. (2006). Simulation of Convective Drying of a Porous Medium with Boundary Conditions provided by CFD, Chemical Engineering research and design, Vol 85(A2), p.113-123. Fluent Inc. (2006). Fluent userss guide. Version 6.3. Lebanon, NH, USA I.E.A. Annex 41 (2008), Whole building heat, air and moisture response Iskra C. R. and Simonson C.J. (2007). Convective mass transfer coefficient for a hydrodynamically developed airflow in a short rectangular duct, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol 50 (11-12), p. 2376-2393. Janssen H. (2002). The influence of soil moisture transfer on building heat loss via the ground. Department of Civil Engineering. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven. Janssen H., Blocken B. and Carmeliet J. (2007). Conservative modelling of the moisture and heat transfer in building components under atmospheric excitation. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol 50(5-6), p. 1128-1140. Milly P. C. D. (1982). Moisture and heat transport in hysteretic, inhomogeneous porous media: a matric headbased formulation and a numerical model. Water Resources Research , Vol 18, p. 498-498. Mortensen L. H., Woloszyn M., Rode C. and Peuhkuri R. (2007). Investigation of microclimate by CFD modeling of moisture interactions between air and constructions. Journal of Building Physics , Vol 30(4), p. 279-315. Talukdar P., Olutmayin S. O., Osanyintola A. F., Simonson C. J. (2007). An experimental data set for benchmarking 1-D, transient heat and moisture transfer models of hygroscopic building materials. Part I: Experimental facility and material property data. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer , Vol 50(23-24), p.4527-4539. Talukdar P., Olutmayin S. O., Osanyintola A. F., Simonson C. J. (2008) . An experimental data set for benchmarking 1-D, transient heat and moisture transfer models of hygroscopic building materials. Part II: Experimental, numerical and analytical data. to be published in: International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer