Assessing condensation and liquid water content in WUFI 2D

All about WUFI 2D
Post Reply
manexi
WUFI User
WUFI User
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:05 am -1100

Assessing condensation and liquid water content in WUFI 2D

Post by manexi »

Hello to all members of the forum.

I'm having some trouble trying to find a way to easily measure the liquid water in my walls.

At first, I thought about studiyng the capillary transfer in between each component, but that only tells me if there's any liquid water going from one side of the control surface to the other. This might not tell me when the water just "stagnates" behind the control surface (e.g. next to a vapour retarder which doesn't allow for liquid transfers).

Another problem is that by only controlling the capillary flow, I can't take into account the liquefaction inside a component... my best bet with this method would be to control all the interfaces in the mesh... but that would be brutal and very time consuming considering the number of divisions in the grid.

I know WUFI-1D can directly give you "Glaser-like" condensation curves along the thickness of your walls. Why can't WUFI-2D do the same? (Aside from the fact that the user would be asked to define the "thickness path")

I thought about just considering RH and use the WufiMotion post-processor to "have an idea" about the evolution of RH along the thickness (since WufiMotion wouldn't extract any curves). Nevertheless RH doesn't give me the condensation itself (I can have condensation below 100% due to the porous nature of the materials).


I'm running out of ideas on this one. Any help?

Thank you!
Manexi
manexi
WUFI User
WUFI User
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2010 4:05 am -1100

Post by manexi »

Hi I think I just found something.

It was a problem of understanding the transfer mechanism itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that condensation (thus superficial condensation) only occurs at 100% RH. Nevertheless this doesn't stops the liquid transfer already present (from rain). Thus, I can have liquid water directly coming from the external boundaries without condensation.

So local RH should tell me if I have or not superficial condensation. :)

On the other hand the only way to know how many liquid water I have inside my component seems to be the study of the capillar flows around said component :( .

Does this seem correct?

Thanks!
Post Reply