Average reduced model to simulate solutions for heat and mass transfer through porous material

Abstract

AbstractThe design of numerical tools to model the behavior of building materials is a challenging task. The crucial point is to save computational costs and maintain the high accuracy of predictions. There are two main limitations on the time scale choice, which places an obstacle to solving the above issues. The first one is the numerical restriction. A number of research studies are dedicated to overcome this limitation and it is shown that it can be relaxed with innovative numerical schemes. The second one is the physical restriction. It is imposed by the properties of a material, the phenomena itself, and the corresponding boundary conditions. This study is focused on the study of a methodology that enables to overcome the physical restriction on the time grid; a so‐called average reduced model is suggested. It is based on smoothing the time‐dependent boundary conditions. Besides this, the approximate solution is decomposed into average and fluctuating components. The primer is obtained by integrating the equations over time, whereas the latter is a user‐defined EM. The methodology is investigated for both heat diffusion and coupled heat and mass transfer. It is demonstrated that the signal core of the boundary conditions is preserved and the physical restriction can be relaxed. The model proved to be reliable, accurate, and efficient also in comparison with the experimental data of 2 years. The implementation of the scarce time‐step of is justified. It is shown, that by maintaining the tolerable error, it is possible to cut computational effort up to almost four times in comparison with the complete model with the same time grid.