Impact of Wind-Driven Rain on Mould Growth and Indoor Climate

In this paper an onset is given to whole building modelling by investigating the impact of wind-driven rain (WDR) on indoor climate and mould growth at interior wall surfaces. The hy-grothermal behaviour of a cubic building with solid brick walls is numerically analysed. The simula-tions demonstrate that the impact of WDR loads on the moisture contents in the walls is much larger near the edge of the walls than at the centre. For the case analysed, WDR causes an increase of in-door relative humidity of up to 51 % and an increase of energy consumptions for heating by 11 % in winter and by 12 % in summer respectively; while a much smaller impact on indoor humidity and a very small impact on energy consumption are seen in spring and autumn. Furthermore the obtained relative humidity and temperature at the interior wall surfaces are combined with isopleths of gen-eralised spore germination time of fungus mould. The results show that WDR loads can have a sig-nificant impact on mould growth especially at the edge of the wall. 1