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Hygrothermal performance of Moso bamboo-based building material

This study focuses on the hygrothermal performance of Moso bamboo. The knowledge in this aspect is remarkable important for the research of building energy saving and the low carbon building design. However, the detailed hygrothermal properties of Moso bamboo are fairly rare. To obtain these data, a series of experimental works have been done for measurement of density, porosity, thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, water vapour permeability, hygrothermal expansion and sorption isotherm of Moso bamboo. To obtain further understanding on the hygrothermal performance of Moso bamboo, a number of dynamic heat and moisture transfer experiments were conducted. These experiments simulated two extreme outdoor environments and one indoor environment. The temperature and RH responses of Moso bamboo panels were monitored. Then a coupled transient heat and moisture transfer numerical simulation at the material level was conducted to predict and validate the hygrothermal performance of Moso bamboo. A sensitivity study of the hygrothermal properties of bamboo was also presented to indentify the influence of each hygrothermal property of Moso bamboo. Major findings include the following aspects. Both experiment and simulation results appear to be consistent with the results of measurements of the basic hygrothermal parameters. The parametric study found that density can be regarded as the most sensible parameter to influence the temperature simulation results at the transient state, while the thermal conductivity dominated the temperature variation at the steady state. The water vapour diffusion resistance factor can be regarded as the most critical parameter to influence the RH simulation results. The influence of liquid water diffusivity is negligible in this study. The parametric study results indicated that the simulation with moisture is more accurate than the simulation without moisture in both equilibrium and transient state. The results also imply that the existence of moisture could increase the heat capacity and reduce the thermal conductivity. The results of this study recommend that the external part of the bamboo culm wall can be utilised to minimise the RH variation of the panel while the internal part of the bamboo culm wall is suitable to increase the thermal insulation performance of the panel. To avoid hygroexpansion, the implementation of external part of bamboo culm wall needs to be minimised.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:715306
Date January 2017
CreatorsHuang, Puxi
ContributorsChang, Wen-Shao ; Ansell, Martin ; Chew, Yong-Min ; Shea, Andrew
PublisherUniversity of Bath
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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