Sharp Front analysis of moisture buffering

Moisture buffering describes the use of materials with high water-vapour sorption capacity to provide humidity control in interior spaces. Established models of the moisture dynamics of buffering are derived from conventional Fickian vapour-diffusion equations. We describe an alternative analysis using a Sharp-Front formulation. This yields a similar expression for the  moisture effusivity, several consistent scalings and a new definition of the moisture penetration depth. Features of the model are compared with  some published experimental data. A new sorption buffer index is a measurable experimental property that describes the water-vapour  buffer strength of the material.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.