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This paper presents and discusses new geochronological and petrological data on a suite of calc-alkaline plutons composed predominantly of diorites and tonalites from the West Massif Central. Their petrochemical fingerprints are compatible with partial melting of a hydrous mantle wedge followed by fractional crystallization of amphibole and plagioclase before final emplacement between 5 and 8 kbar within the continental upper plate of a subduction system. In situ U-Pb zircon dating on tonalites yields a fairly narrow age range of 365−354 Ma (including uncertainties) for igneous crystallization. These calc-alkaline plutons imply active margin magmatism near the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary and are contemporaneous with the back-arc magmatism and HP metamorphism as dated by recent studies. However, such isolated igneous bodies do not form a transcrustal magmatic arc but rather represent dispersed plutons emplaced within less than 30 Myr when all data from the Variscan belt of France are considered. In Limousin, they intrude migmatitic paragneisses and retrogressed eclogites from the Upper Gneiss Unit (UGU), suggesting that the high pressure rocks were already exhumed at 19−30 km depth before 365 Ma. Moreover, the diorites and tonalites are never found within units below the UGU. It therefore suggests that these tectono-metamorphic units of the Western French Massif Central were piled up after 354 Ma. Altogether these results support the monocyclic model for Variscan geodynamics in the French Massif Central, with the transition between oceanic subduction and continental collision taking place between Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous.

The estimation of wall thermal properties through an inverse problem procedure enables to increase the reliability of the model predictions for building energy efficiency. Nevertheless, it requires defining an experimental campaign to obtain in situ observations for existing buildings. The quality of the estimated parameter strongly depends on the quality of the experimental data used for the parameter identification. In other words, there is a close relation between the experiment design and the precision of the retrieved parameters. The design of experiments enables to search for the optimal measurement plan. It ensures the highest precision of the parameter to be estimated. For in situ measurement in buildings, the design of experiments seeks to answer the following questions: How many sensors do we need? What is the sensor position in the wall? The optimal experiment design methodology enables us to answer those questions. The unknown parameter is the thermal conductivity of wall façade model considering two-dimensional heat transfer induced by time and space varying boundary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) are important tools to perform on-going monitoring of the systems and help in their building commissioning. An innovative method is investigated based on combined data-driven and knowledge-based approaches. This article presents the method. In the first phase, a so-called operating map of the system is built using a dimension reduction method and numerical or experimental dataset. This map is composed of several regions corresponding to nominal operation and to specific faults. The second phase focuses on the FDD. The monitored data are projected on the map. According to the position, a clear and precise FDD can be carried. The method is applied to an air handling unit. The map is built using data generated with a building simulation programme. The reliability of the method is proven using experimental data of nominal and fault operation generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD) is an important tool in building commissioning. Providing a consolidated dataset for FDD benchmarking is necessary to accurately evaluate the FDD prediction accuracy and detect anomalies. In this study, we provide an experimental dataset for an air handling unit containing two ducts linked by an air-to-air heat exchanger. The dataset is composed of nominal and faulty operations of the system, including the ground truth in order to investigate various faults in 52 cases. The dataset was obtained by measuring a representative system with real climate variations like the ones obtained by Building Automation Systems. The transition between nominal and fault sequences was continuous, as in real operating conditions. An uncertainty evaluation was carried out to provide confidence bounds in the experimental dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work deals with an inverse two-dimensional nonlinear heat conduction problem to determine the top and lateral surface transfer coefficients. For this, the Bayesian framework with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm is used to determine the posterior distribution of unknown parameters. To handle the computational burden, a lumped one-dimensional model is proposed. The lumped model approximations are considered within the parameter estimation procedure thanks to the Approximation Error Model. The experiments are carried out for several configurations of chamber ventilator speed. Experimental observations are obtained through a complete measurement uncertainty propagation. By solving the inverse problem, accurate probability distributions are determined. Additional investigations are performed to demonstrate the reliability of the lumped model, in terms of accuracy and computational gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current hygrothermal behaviour prediction models neglect the hysteresis phenomenon. This leads to a discrepancy between numerical and experimental results, and a miscalculation of buildings' durability. In this paper, a new mathematical model of hysteresis is proposed and implemented in a hygrothermal model to reduce this discrepancy. The model is based on a symmetry property between sorption curves and uses also a homotopic transformation relative to a parameter s ∈ [ 0 , 1 ]. The advantage of this model lies in its ease of use and implementation since it could be applied with the knowledge of only one main sorption curve by considering s = 0 , in other words, we only use the axisymmetric property here. In the case where the other main sorption curve is known, we use this curve to incorporate the homotopy property in order to calibrate the parameter s.The full version of the proposed model is called Axisymmetric + Homotopic. Furthermore, it was compared not only with the experimental sorption curves of different types of materials but also with a model that is well known in the literature (CARMELIET's model). This comparison shows that the Axisymmetric + Homotopic model reliably predicts hysteresis loops of various types of materials even with the knowledge of only one of the main sorption curves. However, the full version of Axisymmetric + Homotopic model is more reliable and covers a large range of materials. The proposed model was incorporated into the mass transfer model. The simulation results strongly match the experimental ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the spectral method is developed as a reduced-order model for the solution of parametric problems within the building refurbishment framework. We propose to use the spectral reduced-order method to solve parametric problems in an innovative way, integrating the unknown parameter as one of the coordinates of the decomposition. The residual is minimized combining the Tau–Galerkin method with the Collocation approach. The developed method is evaluated in terms of accuracy and reduction of the computational time in three different cases. The dynamic behaviour of unidimensional moisture diffusion is investigated. The cases focus on solving parametric problems in which the solution depends on space, time, diffusivity and material thickness. Results highlight that the parametric spectral reduced-order method provides accurate solutions and can reduce 10 times the degree of freedom of the solution. It allows efficient computation of the physical phenomena with a lower error when compared to traditional approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of numerical tools to model the behavior of building materials is a challenging task. The crucial point is to save computational costs and maintain the high accuracy of predictions. There are two main limitations on the time scale choice, which places an obstacle to solving the above issues. The first one is the numerical restriction. A number of research studies are dedicated to overcome this limitation and it is shown that it can be relaxed with innovative numerical schemes. The second one is the physical restriction. It is imposed by the properties of a material, the phenomena itself, and the corresponding boundary conditions. This study is focused on the study of a methodology that enables to overcome the physical restriction on the time grid; a so‐called average reduced model is suggested. It is based on smoothing the time‐dependent boundary conditions. Besides this, the approximate solution is decomposed into average and fluctuating components. The primer is obtained by integrating the equations over time, whereas the latter is a user‐defined EM. The methodology is investigated for both heat diffusion and coupled heat and mass transfer. It is demonstrated that the signal core of the boundary conditions is preserved and the physical restriction can be relaxed. The model proved to be reliable, accurate, and efficient also in comparison with the experimental data of 2 years. The implementation of the scarce time‐step of 1h is justified. It is shown, that by maintaining the tolerable error, it is possible to cut computational effort up to almost four times in comparison with the complete model with the same time grid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, both numerical and experimental investigations were carried out on the durability of hemp concrete. For this, an accelerated aging process was performed using cycles of immersion, freezing and drying. Then, an experimental campaign was enabled to determine heat and mass transfer properties, as well as the microstructure for both aged and reference materials. Observations using a digital microscope showed the appearance of cracks at the interfaces and an increase of the porosity of about 6%. These microstructural modifications imply a non-negligible evolution of heat and mass transfer properties. Thus, a numerical model for the prediction of heat and mass transfer was developed. The prediction of physical phenomena was computed using both aged and reference material properties. It highlights the aging effects on the behaviour of the hemp concrete. The numerical simulation results showed significant discrepancies between the predicted relative humidity values for the two configurations (aged and reference) of about 18% and a maximum phase shift of 40 min, due to the amplification of the mass transfer kinetics after aging. Nevertheless, few deviations in temperature values were found. Thus, after aging, sensible heat fluxes were overestimated compared to the reference case, unlike latent heat fluxes, where an underestimation was shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]