Moisture and heat transport in porous materials: analytical solutions for the case of periodic boundary conditions.

Abstract

In this chapter, we present approximate analytical solutions for moisture and heat transport equations in porous materials under periodic boundary conditions. The significance of this is threefold: (1) the solutions presented provide results which are comparable with data collected by other authors; (2) the solutions developed serve to gauge the accuracy of any numerical approach such as the finite element and the finite difference techniques when applied to solve this type of equations; (3) finally, these solutions provide an approach not only to predict moisture and temperature distribution but also to evaluate the importance of the transfer coefficients in moisture analysis.