Impact of moisture buffering for improving summer comfort in buildings

International audienceMoisture buffering can be defined as the effect on the atmosphere of the exchanges of water vapour between the surface layers of hygroscopic materials and the indoor environment. Since latent heat exchanges take place, the moisture buffering has a direct thermal effect on summer indoor temperatures. We propose here to investigate this thermal effect according to the French thermal regulation conventions. We ran simulations at the whole building scale for residential buildings without any cooling system. Two models are used to simulate moisture buffering effect: a fully coupled hygrothermal model (WUFI Plus) and the Effective Moisture Penetration Depth model. We study the impact of walls assemblies, finishing, climate, ventilation rate and moisture load. Eventually, the main interest is more about relative humidity than temperature