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Title: Development of a mold risk model for wood buildings

Source: fplrip-4723-030-COSchoolofMines-Zelinka-Glass-Pei.

Author(s)Pei, Shiling; Glass, Samuel V.; Zelinka, Samuel L.

Publication Year: 2017  View PDF »

Related Publications: view

Category: Research In Progress

Abstract: Hygrothermal analysis allows a designer to predict moisture and temperature conditions that might occur within a building envelope assembly over time. Such analysis can improve the understanding of how the building envelope responds to indoor and outdoor environments and can help identify potential moisture problems. ASHRAE Standard 160, Criteria for Moisture-Control Design Analysis in Buildings, provides a standardized set of criteria on how to conduct hygrothermal analyses and evaluate and report the results. In addition to setting input moisture loads and selection of design weather years, it also provides evaluation criteria. The evaluation criteria are used to interpret the results of the hygrothermal analysis to see whether the building may have problems with mold growth or corrosion. Although the standard claims to be a performance-based design criteria, the evaluation criteria for mold growth and corrosion are fixed criteria and are not a reliability, risk-based approach. Because of this, the original mold criteria in the standard were overly conservative and many buildings that were already built and showed no visible mold growth actually failed the Standard 160 mold criteria (Glass and others 2015). Recently, Standard 160 incorporated improved mold evaluation criteria based on the work of Viitanen and colleagues (Ojanen and others 2010). This project plans to extend these new evaluation criteria to include a reliability-probabilistic approach so that the risk of mold can be evaluated for each construction.

Keywords: mold; building moisture; moisture modeling; risk; reliability analysis

Publication Review Process: Non-Refereed (Other)

File size: 715 kb(s)

Date posted: 01/31/2017
RITS Product ID: 83991
Current FPL Scientists associated with this product (listed alphabetically)
Glass, Samuel V.
Research Physical Scientist
Zelinka, Samuel L.
Materials Research Engineer
 

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