Experimental Study on the Hygrothermal Behavior of a Coated Sprayed Hemp Concrete Wall

Abstract

Hemp concrete is a sustainable lightweight concrete that became popular in the field of building construction because of its thermal and environmental properties. However; available experimental data on its hygrothermal behavior are rather scarce in the literature. This paper describes the design of a large-scale experiment developed to investigate the hygrothermal behavior of hemp concrete cast around a timber frame through a spraying process; and then coated with lime-based plaster. The equipment is composed of two climatic chambers surrounding the tested wall. The experiment consists of maintaining the indoor climate at constant values and applying incremental steps of temperature; relative humidity or vapor pressure in the outdoor chamber. Temperature and relative humidity of the room air and on various depths inside the wall are continuously registered during the experiments and evaporation phenomena are observed. The influence of the plaster on the hygrothermal behavior of hemp concrete is investigated. Moreover; a comparison of experimental temperatures with numerical results obtained from a purely conductive thermal model is proposed. Comparing the model with the measured data gave satisfactory agreement.

Keywords

• bio-based material
• lime plaster
• multilayer wall
• large-scale experiment
• temperature and relative humidity measurement
• coupled heat and moisture transfer
• evaporation
• moisture accumulation
• 1D thermal simulation