Numerical analysis of heat and mass transfer in a passive building component cooled by water evaporation.

Describes details of a passive building component consisting of a ventilated roof with a maintained wet lower surface of the cavity over which the external air flows. Numerical simulations were carried out for thermal performance evaluation purposes of the thermal field, flow field and water vapour concentration of air within the duct. Suitable procedures were coded and linked to a commercial program for computational fluid dynamics, in order to obtain an estimate of the thermal cooling flux on the wet surface. Presents an original approach to the solution of a coupled heat and mass transfer problem. Shows the values of the mean specific heat and mass fluxes of the wet lower surface and results of numerical simulations of the temperature field. Highlights numerical problems that have been dealt with, due to particular physical phenomena such as boundary coupled fields and radiation between cavity surfaces.