Model evaluation of heat and mass transfer in wood exposed to fire

Abstract

The paper presents sensitivity analysis of coupled heat and moisture transfer model for timber exposed to fire. The objective of the analysis is to discover the non-influential model parameters and the model simplification accordingly. To achieve this, the standardized regression coefficient (SRC) method is introduced to determine the impact of specific permeability of dry timber K, bound water diffusion coefficient $D_{0}$, vapour diffusion coefficient $\zeta$ and heat of sorption $h_{{\mathrm{s}}}$ on the two model outcomes, charring depth $d_{{\text {char}}}$ and total moisture content $m_{{\text {tot}}}$. The SRC method revealed that the least influential parameter is specific permeability of dry timber K. Therefore the model was adequately simplified by a more simple description of the energy equation, while preserving the accuracy of the results. Thus, the efficiency of the present coupled heat and moisture transfer model was increased.