Towards a Realistic Estimation of the Walls Moisture Buffering in an Occupied Room2018 - 164 pages Humidity in buildings has nowadays become a major concern as it impacts simultaneously the energy consumption, the occupants' comfort and the moisture related risks in the buildings envelope. Buildings materials have the ability to absorb and release large amounts of moisture and therefore they may dampen the indoor relative humidity variations. This is called the moisture buffering capacity. It depends on the vapour exchanges between the air and the walls, the ventilation and the indoor moisture sources. This property was previously highlighted at material and wall scales through laboratory experiments and numerical models. However, few models describe the indoor sources due to the occupants' presence and activities in a realistic way. In this work, a hygrothermal room model was developed in Python to investigate the influence of the occupancy scenario and of the impact of the walls moisture buffering on indoor air balance. This model regroups the coupled heat and mass transfer in the walls, as well as the indoor sources depicted by the air-conditioning system and the occupants' presence and activities. The numerical modelling of the latter relies on a stochastic occupancy model implemented in a platform called No-MASS. Performance indicators on the energy demand, the indoor hygric comfort and the moisture related risks in the walls were defined to quantify the hygothermal performance of a room. The sensitivity of the performance indicators towards the occupancy scenario was assessed by simulating a stochastic occupancy scenario, a deterministic one and a constant one. Results showed a marginal influence of the scenario at year scale. However, at smaller time scales (seasonal or monthly), their impact on the indoor relative humidity dampening was not negligible, mainly due to the consideration of a seasonal effect for the stochastic scenario. [...]. |