A Data Sorting Method for Rapid Measurement of Moisture Content in Porous Insulation Materials

摘要

Moisture in insulation materials will impair their thermal and acoustic performance, inducemicrobe growth, and cause equipment/material corrosion. Moisture content measurement isvital to the effective moisture control. This investigation proposes a simple, fast, and accuratemethod to measure moisture content of insulation materials through matching the measuredtemperature rise. Since moisture content corresponds to unique thermophysical properties, themeasured temperature rise varies with moisture content. During the data analysis, all possiblevolumetric heat capacities and thermal conductivities are enumerated to match the measuredtemperature rise based on the composite heat conduction theory. Then, the partial derivativeswith respect to both volumetric heat capacity and thermal conductivity are evaluated, so thatthese partial derivatives will be guaranteed equaling to zero at the optimal solutions to themoisture content. Compared to the benchmarked gravimetric method, this proposed methodwas found having a better accuracy but requiring a short test time.