Coupling moisture transport in air flows and porous materials using CFD

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. Validation of the model shows an excellent agreement between simulations and experiments.