Coupled air flow and heat conduction model for mechanically ventilated foundations.

Rising moisture from the ground has caused quite a lot of damage on foundations of Swedish buildings. It is in some constructions possible to prevent this by mechanical ventilation below the floor or below the concrete slab. This paper will present a model for coupled air flow and heat conduction for mechanically ventilated foundations. The presented model uses analytical expressions for the air flow in an air-permeable layer below a rectangular building. Analytical double-periodic functions of elliptic type are used. The ground temperature is simulated by using a time-dependent finite difference method.