Numerical analysis of simultaneous heat and mass transfer in cork lightweight concretes used in building envelopes

Abstract

A numerical study was carried out in order to investigate the behaviour of building envelopes made of lightweight concretes. In this work, we are particularly interested to the building envelopes which are consist of cement paste with incorporation of cork aggregates in order to obtain small thermal conductivity and low-density materials. The mathematical formulation of coupled heat and mass transfer in wet porous materials has been made using Luikov's model, the system describing temperature and moisture transfer processes within building walls is solved numerically with the finite elements method. The obtained results illustrate the temporal evolutions of the temperature and the moisture content, and the distributions of the temperature and moisture content inside the wall for several periods of time. They allow us to specify the effect of the nature and dosage of fibre on the heat and mass transfer. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.