Modeling of Tropical Rainfall Exposure for the Study of Moisture Penetration in Porous Building Materials
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 22, Issue 8
Abstract
The study of moisture ingress and accumulation in porous building materials constitutes an essential facet of durability analysis and design of structural elements. Because the phenomenon is closely driven by the conditions of the service environment, a rational assessment of exposure conditions is needed. The pertinence is especially critical for those conditions which bear the potential to strongly influence the state of saturation of the material—exposure to rains, for instance. This paper presents an exploratory statistical study to characterize the manifestation of tropical rainfall events and quantify the concomitant cyclic wetting-drying effect. To account for the diversity of tropical conditions the study encompasses instances of five Indian meteorological stations, each pertaining to a distinct climatic zone of the subcontinent. The analysis uses the last fifteen years’ worth of available rainfall data obtained from the archives of the Indian Meteorological Department. The derived characteristics are used to design typical rainfall scenarios for the studied stations. The delineated scheme can be implemented in general to model rainfall scenarios for any given station of interest which subsequently could be adopted to facilitate the study of moisture intrusion in porous structural materials exposed to intermittent rains.
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 22 • Issue 8 • August 2017
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 22, 2016
Accepted: Jan 24, 2017
Published online: Apr 11, 2017
Published in print: Aug 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Sep 11, 2017
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