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The energy performance of buildings represents a major challenge in terms of sustainable development. The buildings and buildings construction sectors combined are responsible for over one-third of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions. In order to reduce the energy consumption of buildings and their harmful impact on the environment, special attention has been paid in recent years to the use of bio-based materials. In the present paper, a model of heat and moisture transfer hollow hemp concrete wall is proposed using finite element method. The energy and mass balances are expressed using measurable transfer drivers as temperature water content and vapor pressure and coefficients related explicitly to the macroscopic properties of material as thermal conductivity, specific heat, and water vapor permeability. The proposed model is implemented in MATLAB code and validated through experimental measurements.

The energy performance of buildings represents a major challenge in terms of sustainable development. The buildings and buildings construction sectors combined are responsible for over one-third of global final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions. In order to reduce the energy consumption of buildings and their harmful impact on the environment, special attention has been paid in recent years to the use of bio-based materials. Several works have been carried out in the last decades in order to model the coupled heat, air and moisture transfers in the building envelope but the difficulties lies in the identification of numerous parameters that the HAM proposed models use. In the present paper, a sensitivity study regarding the HAM parameters is implemented in order to apprehend the most determining parameters during the transfer processes. A reduced model based on these parameters is then determined.