Hygrothermal behaviour of a hemp concrete wall: comparison between experimental and numerical results

The analysis of the hygrothermal behaviour of green building materials is investigated in this work. For this, a 1D heat, air and moisture transfer model was developed using Comsol Multiphysics® and applied to a hemp concrete wall. Particular attention is paid in the experimental determination of hygrothermal properties and their dependency with the temperature and the moisture content. To validate the model, a hemp concrete wall was monitored for 12 month under various boundary conditions. The results suggest in our case that accounting for the thermal dependence of the sorption isotherm is of high importance, whereas moisture thermal diffusion has only a minor effect on temperature and vapour pressure distribution.