Multiscale analysis of water vapor diffusion in low density fiberboard: Implications as a building material

Abstract

This work is devoted to diffusion mechanisms in low-density fiberboard (255 kg m−3). Experiments were performed under unsteady state conditions (relative humidity step from 37% to 71%) with different thicknesses (half thickness ranging from 1 mm to 20 mm). The mass diffusivity was determined by inverse analysis from the experimental moisture content evolution, using a comprehensive macroscopic model of coupled heat and mass transfer. A clear failure of Fickian’s law becomes evident regarding the effect of thickness. A dual-scale model, based on the concept of distributed microstructure models with coupled heat and mass transfer at both scales, was used to simulate the experiments. The large number of dual-scale simulations proposed in this work were also analyzed by the inverse method. These dual-scale simulation results were successfully confronted to the experiment. The good fit with the experimental data is obtained for a diffusivity of the microscopic phase (the storage phase) equal to 1.10−13m2 s−1 for a fiber radius of 20μm. As the main recommendation, we advise that the dual scale effect can be neglected for this kind of fiberboard for a total thickness larger than some centimeters, depending on the panel density. This also means that this effect must be considered in material characterization or when capturing the buffering effect of the surface layers of the envelope.