Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Florence, Italy
19th – 23rd July 2009
Keywords: driving rain, building envelope, hygrothermal behaviour, moisture transfer, durability.
ABSTRACT
To investigate the validity of the traditional approach to implement wind-driven rain (WDR) in
numerical models of heat, air and moisture (HAM) transfer in building components, under real
atmospheric conditions, a new set-up was developed at a test building. WDR intensity, other relevant
environmental conditions and the resulting moisture response of the wall to these conditions (both
hygroscopic loading and WDR) were simultaneously measured. The whole measurement data set was
used for validation. Large differences between the measurement and simulation results were found
and possible causes discussed. It is concluded that many influencing parameters interact, and that
therefore precisely simulating the hygrothermal response of walls to WDR is very difficult.
1. INTRODUCTION
Wind-driven rain (WDR) is one of the most important moisture sources when analysing the
hygrothermal behaviour of building components and thus of great concern in the field of building
physics (e.g. Kunzel and Kiessl 1997; Dalgliesh and Surry 2003; Karagiozis et al. 2003; Blocken and
Contact person: M. Abuku, Laboratory of Building Physics, Department of Civil Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 40, 3001 Leuven, Belgium, +32 (0)16 321348 and +32 (0)16 321980.
E-mail masaru.abuku@bwk.kuleuven.be
Carmeliet 2004; Straube and Schumacher 2006; Abuku et al. 2009a). In such numerical analysis, the
moisture flux at the exterior wall surface gm (kg/m2s) without runoff is traditionally expressed as (e.g.
Blocken et al. 2007; Janssen et al. 2007a, 2007b):
g m = −β e (p e − p s, e ) − I WDR (1)
where βe is the convective moisture transfer coefficient (s/m), pe and ps,e are the vapour pressures (Pa)
of the outdoor air and at the outside wall surface, respectively, and IWDR is the WDR intensity
(kg/m2s). IWDR can be determined by experimental, semi-empirical or numerical means (Sanders
1996; Blocken and Carmeliet 2004). In the current paper, IWDR determined by these means is
expressed as IWDR,mea, IWDR,sem, and IWDR,sim. It should be noted that the development and validation of
numerical WDR simulation have recently intensively been reported in several papers (e.g. Choi 1991,
1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1999; Hangan 1999; van Mook 2002; Blocken and Carmeliet 2002, 2005,
2006b, 2007; Tang and Davidson 2004; Tang et al. 2004; Abuku et al. 2009b; Briggen et al. 2009).
Equation (1) is quite tempting for a simple and speedy simulation and thus has been traditionally
applied (e.g. Hall and Kalimeris 1982, 1984; Künzel and Kiessl 1997; Hagentoft et al. 2004; Blocken
et al. 2007; Janssen et al. 2007a, 2007b). However, its validity is uncertain because of the difference
between the model and reality. Real WDR is the sum of individual raindrops that impinge on the
facade in a temporally and spatially discrete modus. Apart from spreading at impact, they may also
splash or bounce off the facade. Let us define IWDR,exa as the real exact WDR load that is supplied onto
the facade material and that is available for absorption and/or evaporation. It does not include those
fractions of impinging raindrops that are lost due to splashing and/or bouncing at impact. Thus
IWDR,exa does not always exactly equal IWDR,mea, IWDR,sem, or IWDR,sim. Regardless of the difference
between the model and reality, only little attention has thus far been paid to the reliability of the
traditional approach for WDR loads in HAM models. Accurate and complete measurement data are
required to investigate the validity and give physical insights into possible differences between
simulated and measured hygrothermal responses of walls.
In this paper, the validity of the traditional approach is investigated under real atmospheric
conditions. First, a new experimental set-up developed to accurately measure the response of walls to
WDR at a test building is presented. Second, field measurements of both WDR loads on building
facades and the response of walls to these moisture loads are documented. Measurement results are
finally compared with simulation results to investigate the validity of the traditional approach and
differences are discussed.
The intention of the new experimental set-up and the measurements presented in this section is to
obtain detailed measurements of the moisture response (weight change) of a building material test
sample (mmea) and the relevant meteorological parameters to analyse the accuracy of simulations of
the moisture response with the traditional approach (msim(IWDR,mea)). Note that these simulations will
be performed with measured WDR intensities (IWDR,mea) as input.
Figure 1: (a) VLIET test building and the surrounding environment (view from
south-west) and the schematic diagrams of the (b) elevation and (c) X-intersection of
the test section and the new set-up.
2.2 Measurements of wind-driven rain and the response of walls.
Figure 2 shows results of measurements performed during two periods in 2007: November 29, 0:00
(GMT +1:00) - December 2, 0:00 and December 3, 20:00 - December 11, 15:00. In all measurements
described in the current paper, a specimen of calcium silicate (0.25 m×0.45 m×0.09 m) was used
because its very high capillary moisture content (wc = 803 kg/m3) and water absorption coefficient (A
= 1.22 kg/m2s0.5) (Roels et al. 2004) allow long-term measurements without surface saturation. Note
that at surface saturation, runoff will occur. All specimen surfaces except the exterior surface were
water and vapour tight sealed and thus were not exposed to any moisture flow. Figure 2 shows the
weight change mmea of the specimen from the initial value, the cumulative amount SWDR,mea of the
WDR and the WDR intensity IWDR,mea. Note that mmea was measured at the test subsection B, whereas
SWDR,mea and IWDR,mea were measured at the test subsection A (Figure 1(b)). No runoff occurred during
these measurements. The figures show that mmea increased during WDR and decreased due to
evaporation afterwards. Furthermore the temperatures at the centre of the exterior and interior
surfaces of the specimen and the outdoor air temperature and vapour pressure near the specimen were
simultaneously measured as well as the reference wind speed and wind direction. These results will
be used to investigate the validity of Equation (1) in the next section.
Errors in WDR measurements include the evaporation of adhesion water from the impervious
surface of the WDR gauge and from the tube leading the collected rain water to the reservoir, and
evaporation from the reservoir (Blocken and Carmeliet 2006a). The first type of error, called the
“adhesion-water evaporation error”, was estimated at only 3% for the current rain events, and
therefore no correction for this was applied. The second type of error was observed to cause small
decreases (0.05 mm WDR per day) of the water level in the reservoir during long drying periods.
These errors were removed from the results. Another possible error is the wind error, i.e. the error
introduced by the fact that the body of the WDR gauge locally changes the wind-flow pattern. This is
expected to be only significant for oblique winds (Blocken and Carmeliet 2006a), but the wind
direction during the rain, for the two periods, was approximately 225°, i.e. perpendicular to the
facade. In addition, note that the aperture of the WDR gauge is slightly (3 cm) protruded compared to
the wall surface. For the rain events analysed in this paper, the reference wind speed is high enough
(U10 > 2 m/s) to provide sufficient inertia to the raindrops. As a result, their trajectories can be
assumed to follow straight lines for at least the last 3 cm to the wall, which will cause the same catch
by the WDR gauge and the wall surface area. Other possible errors are splashing and bouncing of
raindrops at impact on the gauge collection area, but these will be discussed in the next section.
IWDR,mea (mm/h)
IWDR,mea (mm/h)
300 8 900 4
SWDR,mea
mmea mmea
150 6 600 3
0 4 300 2
IWDR,mea IWDR,mea
-150 2 0 1
-300 0 -300 0
29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
day day
Figure 2: Measurement results of (a) November 29 - December 2, 2007 and (b)
December 3 -12, 2007. mmea: weight change of the specimen; SWDR,mea: cumulative
amount; IWDR,mea: intensity of wind-driven rain.
The boundary conditions for heat transfer in the simulation are the surface temperatures θs,e and θs,i,
measured at the exterior and interior surface of the material sample, respectively. The exterior
boundary conditions for moisture transfer are the measured WDR intensity IWDR,exa, the measured
outdoor vapour pressure pe, and the convective moisture transfer coefficient βe. For windward
facades, which are those exposed to WDR, Janssen et al. (2007b) described βe with the following
equation based on Sharples (1984) and the Lewis analogy:
β e = 7.7 × 10 −9 (3.06 U 10 + 5.44 ) (2)
For the moment, we also adopt this equation, although it clearly suffers from some limitations. For
example, it does not take into account the shape and size of the building, the position at the building
facade and the wind direction. At the interior surface, a zero vapour flux boundary condition is
imposed.
For the measurements, during 20 hours before November 28, 16:00, the specimen was kept at a
constant temperature of 22 ± 0.5 ºC and relative humidity of 50 ± 6 %. After that, the specimen was
installed in the set-up as shown Figure 1. So the initial temperature and moisture content of the
specimen for the simulation of the first period are based on these conditions. Unfortunately the initial
moisture condition of the specimen for the second period was not recorded. However, because the
specimen was exposed to strong WDR intensities during 39 hours between the first and the second
period, the relative humidity in the specimen is considered to have been very high at the beginning of
the second period. Therefore the initial relative humidity value is set at 99 % for the simulation of the
second period.
Taking into account earlier findings on the importance of the time resolution of the meteorological
input data (Blocken et al. 2007), a time step of one minute was used for the simulations in this paper.
(a) (b)
Equation (2) / 2
450 600
300 300
mmea
150 Equation (2)
Equation (2) 0
mmea
Equation (2) × 2 Equation (2) × 2
0 -300
29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
day day
Figure 3: Simulated weight changes msim(IWDR,mea) of the specimen compared to
measured ones mmea. (a) 29/11/2007 - 2/12/2007 and (b) 3/12/2007 - 11/12/2007.
Figure 4: (a) Splashing and (b) bouncing at raindrop impact on a vertical surface.
Figure 5: Wall-mounted wind-driven rain gauge used in this study and in earlier
studies (Blocken and Carmeliet 2005, 2006a). The gauge is made of PMMA
(polymethyl-methacrylate) with a collection area of 0.2 × 0.2 m2.
3.2.3 Averaged flux versus discrete and random impingement of individual drops.
Figure 6 shows that the traditional approach (Equation (1)) simulates a uniform absorption and
evaporation over a certain surface area, which is clearly different from the absorption and evaporation
at discrete positions, resulting from the discrete and random impingement of raindrops. The use of the
traditional approach, even if splashing and bouncing would be absent, could lead to a difference
between mexa and msim, as obtained with the traditional approach, due to differences in the absorption
and evaporation processes. Abuku et al. (2009c) performed detailed HAM simulations with a
“discrete” modelling approach for absorption and evaporation, in which the WDR sum was
decomposed into individual drops, which were subsequently randomly distributed over the material
surface. Raindrop absorption and evaporation were modelled with the finite element technique. A
small part of a material surface was modelled and its volume was discretised into 10,281 finite
elements. This is schematically depicted in Figure 7. Note that, in this study, only a very small part of
the material sample was modelled to limit the computational cost. The obtained results, in terms of
moisture content (weight change), were compared to those obtained with the traditional approach.
This numerical study showed that using an averaged WDR flux leads to an overestimation of
evaporation at building facades and thus an underestimation of the moisture content/weight change of
the specimen when IWDR is very low (e.g. IWDR < 0.1 mm/h under the conditions of their study); but to
an underestimation of evaporation and thus an overestimation of the weight change when IWDR is
higher (e.g. IWDR > 0.3 mm/h). Hence, when taking into account the fact that WDR loads with IWDR <
0.1 mm/h only have a minor influence on the moisture content in walls (Abuku et al. 2009c), this
“averaging error” will usually result in an overestimation of the simulated average moisture content.
Figure 8(a) compares the simulated and measured material weight changes in one hour, ∆msim and
∆mmea, during the occurrence of WDR in the two periods. In this figure, the results of the simulations
with Equation (2) / 2 for βe are used, for which “best” results were obtained during drying periods in
Figure 3. Figure 8(a) shows that the simulations indeed overestimate the material weight changes
during WDR, and that hourly overestimations can go up to more than 100%. Note that data where
IWDR,mea is lower than 0.1 mm/h and where ∆msim and ∆mmea are negative (due to the low IWDR,mea and
the high evaporation) were not included in this graph.
Figure 8(b) shows the correlation between ∆msim - ∆mmea for each hour and the measured
wind-driven rain sum ∆SWDR,mea in that hour (all for the surface area 0.25 m × 0.45 m of the specimen
used in the measurements). Note that results are only shown for those hours also included in Figure
8(a). The positive values of ∆msim - ∆mmea indicate the overestimation of the material weight change
by the simulations. A positive correlation is found, with R2 = 0.82, and described by Equation (3):
∆ m sim − ∆ m mea = 0.34 ∆ S WDR , mea (3)
The factor 0.34 in this equation is a measure for the relative overestimation of the measurements by
the simulations, i.e. the overestimation per unit of measured WDR sum. Note that this seems to
correspond quite well to the reduction factor 0.7 (“rain absorptivity factor”) by Künzl and Kiessl
(1997), but that a direct comparison cannot be made because it is not known if and to what extent
these authors changed βe to improve the agreement between measurements and simulations. In
addition, these authors used hourly meteorological input data, while 1-minute data were used in the
present study. Regardless, the argumentation in the present paper is that this factor may be related not
only to errors caused by βe, but also to errors due to splashing/bouncing and WDR flux averaging.
Note that Equation (3) was obtained for only two rain periods, and that the scatter is considerable.
Therefore, this equation should not be used to correct simulations. Instead, more research is needed
on the convective moisture transfer coefficient βe, and on the quantification of the splashing/bouncing
and flux averaging errors.
(a) (b)
60 60
50 50
∆msim - ∆mmea (g)
40 40
∆msim (g)
30 30
20 20
4. CONCLUSIONS
At present, numerical models for Heat-Air-Moisture (HAM) transfer in porous building materials
use the traditional approach for wind-driven rain (WDR) as a boundary condition. In this traditional
approach, the total mass of all raindrops impinging on a certain surface area of a building facade
during the time interval of the meteorological input data is spatially and temporally averaged and is
supplied to the facade as an averaged moisture flux. However, real WDR is the sum of individual
raindrops that impinge on the facade in a spatially and temporally discrete modus, and that do not
only spread at impact, but may also splash or bounce off the facade. Therefore, the reliability of this
simplification can be questioned. This paper has presented a new experimental set-up that was
developed to investigate the validity of the traditional approach under real atmospheric conditions.
The set-up measures the relevant meteorological parameters, the impinging WDR intensity and the
resulting material weight change of a calcium silicate building material sample. The measured WDR
intensity was used to perform numerical simulations of the moisture content/material weight change
with the traditional approach, and the simulation results were compared with the corresponding
measurements. This comparison showed that the simulations significantly overestimated the
measured average moisture content in the specimen during part of the two periods. It was shown that
the uncertainty of the convective moisture transfer coefficient was not the main source of the
overestimations, because the differences between the simulated and measured responses of the
sample mainly occurred during rain. The overestimations may therefore also partly be attributed to
two errors that are associated with the traditional approach to implement WDR in HAM models: (1)
the splashing/bouncing error and (2) the averaging error, both of which were analysed in earlier
research. The splashing/bouncing error refers to the fact that fractions of raindrops that splash or
bounce are not available for absorption at the facade surface. The averaging error refers to the
difference in absorption and evaporation between an averaged WDR flux and a flux composed of
discretely and randomly impinging drops. At this moment however, it is not possible to precisely
quantify the splashing/bouncing error and the averaging error. The purpose of this paper was
primarily to question the traditional approach and to point to possible error sources. Many questions
on the topic of this paper remain and will need to be answered by future research. It is concluded that
accurate and reliable numerical HAM simulation of the response of walls to impinging WDR is a very
difficult task. Future research should quantify the influence of each of these errors on HAM analyses
under real atmospheric conditions, in order to implement the insights obtained by the current study
into practical models of HAM transfer under WDR loads.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The results in this paper have been obtained within KUL OT/04/28, ‘Towards a reliable prediction of
the moisture stress on building enclosures’, funded by the K.U.Leuven and IWT 050154, ‘Heat, air
and moisture performance engineering: a whole building approach’, funded by the Flemish
Government. This financial support is gratefully acknowledged.
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