Modelling versus experimental study of rising damp in historical buildings"

Abstract

The conservation of historical buildings assumes nowadays a cionsiderable importance and it has had a great development in these past few years. We can say that among all the different kinds of manifestations of dampness rising damp in historical buildings is an important one. Since experimental investigations are rather expensive and time-consuming there is an increasing interest in using calculative methods in order to assess moisture behavior of building components. Computational programs aloow a two-dimensional analysis of the simultaneous heat and moisture transport in building components, which is the best approximation to rising damp. In order to do some simulations we are going to determinate several material properties and to measure indoor and outdoor (North and Centre of Portugal) climatic conditions of same Portuguese historical constructions. Our main goal is the modelling of the rising damp and our results must be assessed by means of practical examples, in which the rising damp behaviour of building components has to be validated experimentally. KEY WORDS: Moisture migration, rising damp, historical buildings