Superficial condensation phenomena often occur on the glazed elements of buildings. As a result, the aim of this study is to put forward an experimental approach to assess the condensation rate on building glazing surface for full-scale room tests under realistic conditions. The proposed method for condensation quantification is applied in this work for surface condensation on a cold glazing (2.90 m x 2.30 m) within a ventilated test room (6.20 m x 3.10 m x 2.50 m). We first describe the full-scale test cell, focusing then on the experimental apparatus employed for the condensation study. This is followed by the description of the methodology for the condensation rate quantification. The approach is based on image processing techniques, using condensation pictures. This allows also to reveal the mechanisms behind the condensation appearance and growth. On the other hand, the experimental data achieved by this method are compared with theoretical results based on condensation rate and heat transfer coefficient correlations available in the literature. An overall difference of up to 18% between the measured results and the theoretical results was found for the condensation rate. Consequently, the method proposed in this work leads to promising results concerning the condensation rate quantification on cold glazing within full-scale enclosures.

Excessive indoor moisture promotes the growth of mold and condensation on building envelope, which lead to severe IAQ problems. Given the transient, unsteady heat and mass transfer problem, studies dealing with the condensation phenomenon are generally lacking in the literature, especially studies on the condensation rate prediction. Consequently, this paper presents a method to quantify experimentally the condensation rate of droplets formed on a cold glazing surface in a full-scale entirely controlled test room (6.2 x 3.1 x 2.5 m). The condensation qualitative characterization, i.e. the moment of its appearance and its growth mechanism, is achievable using a macro-photography technique. From the time-series of droplet images captured, an image post-processing method is used to detect the droplet contours and to estimate the condensation mass flow rate. Comparisons between experimental and theoretical results show some agreement, which could validate the feasibility of imaging techniques in full-scale condensation studies. Those first results are encouraging and valuable since there were no similar studies in the literature at such the scale. Further investigations are needed in order to clarify all these aspects related to the accuracy of the condensation rate quantification methodology developed in this work.

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