Finite volume solution of heat and moisture transfer through three-dimensional textile materials

Abstract

This paper focuses on the numerical study of heat and moisture transfer in three-dimensional clothing assemblies, based on a multi-component and multiphase flow model, which includes heat/moisture convection and conduction/diffusion as well as phase change (in the form of the condensation/evaporation and vapor absorption by fiber). A class of flux type boundary conditions is used for the clothing assemblies. To maintain physical conservations, a splitting semi-implicit finite volume method on a structured hexahedron mesh is proposed for solving the system of nonlinear convection–diffusion–reaction equations, in which the calculation of liquid water content absorbed by fiber is decoupled from the rest of the computation. Four types of clothing assemblies are investigated and comparisons with experimental measurements are also presented.