The drying out capacity of a ventilated internal cavity with a heating cable, analytical model and empirical verification

This study is concerned with the use of interior air channels in walls for the drying out of surplus water in floor constructions. The floor is to be dried out by the means of an air gap, while a heating cable at the bottom of an adjacent wall channel provides a driving force for the flow. The model of this study can be used to quantify the drying out capacity of such a construction, given the geometrical configuration and the effect of the cable. By posing heat and mass balance equations for a star network equivalent to the delta network of the actual physical problem the temperature and moisture profiles for the floor channel are obtained. The wetted surface of the floor is assumed to be saturated, while the saturated moisture content varies with temperature along the surface. The temperature and moisture distributions along the air gap and the drying out capacity are obtained as a function of the flow rate. The physical problem of the wall channel is posed in terms of the governing equations of conservation. The Boussinesq approximation is used to restrict the variation in density to that of the gravitational force. The buoyancy generated by the cable is related to the frictional forces of the channel walls, providing a relationship between the flow rate and the effect of the cable. The analytical results are compared with laboratory measurements and show good agreement for a number of different heights of the air gap in the floor.