Relative humidity analysis, retrofitting the Sint-Pieterschurch in Ghent

The Sint-Pieterschurch in the city of Ghent is one of the largest churches of the city. It was built in the 17th century. The city council wants to use the church not only for its religious functions, but also for cultural activities as concerts and exhibitions. To be able to do this the thermal comfort of the visitors has to be guaranteed. At this moment the church has no central heating system. Gas heaters are used during services. Installing a central heating system will influence the humidity and moisture behaviour of the church. As the church contains several important works of art as well as a monumental organ, it is of great importance to analyse the air humidity behaviour of the church. Rapid changes in moisture content of the valuable objects can cause great damage to them.In this paper CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) using FLUENT is used to evaluate the effect of heating on air flow, temperature distribution and relative humidity variation inside the church. Measurements were done inside the church, with special attention being paid to the area around the organ. This way a suitable heating system is selected and an optimum distribution of air inlet can be determined.