Authors: Nikita Khatri, Rashmin Damle, Rajan Rawal
Abstract:
Hygrothermal behavior in materials can impact the energy consumption and thermal comfort of the building space. Commonly, cement plaster is used for plastering surfaces of a building space instead of the traditionally employed lime plaster. With this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate the hygrothermal performance of cement and lime plastered surfaces. To understand the behavior of these materials, two test cells of 1m3 volume having similar construction were developed in Jodhpur, India. The performance of these two plasters was evaluated by carrying out both experimentation and simulation. The test cells were monitored for surface temperature, moisture content, indoor air temperature, relative humidity (RH) and globe temperature. It was observed that the indoor temperature of the lime plastered cell was lesser by 3.1-5.2℃ as compared to the cement plastered test cell. The variation of indoor RH in the lime plastered cell was in the range of 23-60% while the same for the cement plastered cell was 20-65%. Hygrothermal simulations carried out with the Effective Moisture Penetration Depth (EMPD) algorithm showed that the measured and predicted indoor air temperature and RH were in good agreement with a relative difference of 2-4%. In view of the above, the application of lime plaster can be employed as a sustainable measure for energy-efficient buildings.
