Modelling the hygrothermal behaviour of crop-based construction materials

In the context of developing sustainable buildings, crop-based construction
materials appear as valuable products given their intrinsic environmental and technical
qualities. Their ability to exchange moisture with the surrounding environment and damping
humidity peaks in rooms, referred to as moisture buffering, is often presented as a way to
improve occupants comfort and otentially reduce the operational energy of the building. It is
understandable why modelling their hygrothermal behaviour and evaluating the impact on
indoor air volumes is essential during the design phases.
This thesis explores themodelling of the hygrothermal behaviour of crop-basedmaterials with
a numerical tool. The latter is developed in a widespread general computational environment
that brings both modularity and interoperability. Three challenges are addressed: the
improvement of mathematical description of crop-based materials in non-standard operating
conditions, the improvement of materials properties determination, and the assessment of
their impact at room-scale. Several experimental facilities are developed in parallel to validate
the proposed approaches, focusing on two materials expected to improve indoor conditions:
straw bales and lime-hemp concrete. Results show that the developedmodel allows improving
the understanding and the characterization of these green materials at various scales of study.