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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 65
FINITE ELEMENTS: TECHNIQUES AND DEVELOPMENTS
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping
Paper IV.2

A Mesh Adaptive Technique for the Simulation of Unsaturated Moisture Transfer in Open Porous Materials

S. Roels, J. Carmeliet and H. Hens

Laboratory of Building Physics, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
S. Roels, J. Carmeliet, H. Hens, "A Mesh Adaptive Technique for the Simulation of Unsaturated Moisture Transfer in Open Porous Materials", in B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), "Finite Elements: Techniques and Developments", Civil-Comp Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp 103-109, 2000. doi:10.4203/ccp.65.4.2
Abstract
Moisture transport in most open porous building materials is characterised by a sharp moving waterfront. Due to the high gradients at the waterfront, an accurate simulation requires a very fine mesh. To reduce computational costs a mesh adaptive method based on the Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) technique is proposed. During remeshing mesh-connectivity and number of degrees of freedom remain constant. To relocate the nodes around the moving waterfront an area-based remesh-indicator is equally distributed over the entire domain.

One- and two-dimensional examples of moisture transfer in open porous materials illustrate the capabilities of the method.

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