Moisture buffer value: A comprehensive analysis of essential parameters

There is an increasing focus on the possibilities of utilizing the absorptive ability of porous materials to create passive control of relative humidity (RH) variations in the indoor air.This has led to the need for determination of a newparameter that can be used for characterization of materials.The dynamic nature of the buffering phenomena makes it difficult to use the standard hygrothermal material properties directly for this purpose. In this paper some experimental results on aerated cellular concrete are used for pointing out the methodological and experimental use of dynamic tests for determination of the moisture buffer value of building materials. Special focus is given to the significance of e.g. the equilibrium state, the step size in the RH and whether one is studying absorption or desorption steps. In addition, the paper summarizes shortly the experience until now of studying the moisture buffer phenomenon. In the experiments the material samples were exposed to a sudden change in the RH of the ambient air which were either consecutive absorption and desorption steps or periodically varying cyclic steps.