Pore-scale modelling of moisture transfer in building materials: fullscale pore network construction and hygric property simulation

What if we were able to fully exploit the relation between the pore structure and the hygric properties of porous materials to truly ‘engineer’ the moisture performance of building materials ? Or more specifically, what if we were able to predict the moisture properties of building materials directly from pore structure information ? This would accelerate the hygric analysis of existing building materials and facilitate the hygric design of new building materials. In recent years, research by the “Transport in porous materials" research group – of the Building Physics Section in the Department of Civil Engineering of KU Leuven – has made such numerical prediction of moisture properties of building materials based on pore structure possible. The full-blown application of such pore-scale modelling is hindered by two bottle-necks though: the generation of full-scale pore networks spanning the entire spectrum of pore sizes in building materials, and the computation of moisture properties in these full-scale pore networks. The project aims at taking pore-scale modelling of moisture properties of building materials to the next level, via full-scale stochastic generation of pore networks for building materials as well as proficient algorithms for moisture storage and transport simulation in these networks. The efficacy and reliability of pore-scale modelling of moisture properties of building materials is finally verified by validation with already available moisture properties.