During the past few decades there has been much development and increased professional use of tools to simulate some of the processes that are involved in the analysis of heat, air, and moisture (HAM) conditions in individual constructions that form the building envelope or whole building. This manuscript presents a review of the development and application of hygrothermal analysis methods to simulate the coupled transport processes of heat and moisture for one- or multidimensional cases. As the vast majority of hygrothermal models available in literature are not readily available to the public outside of the organization where they were developed, in this analysis we consider only the 14 hygrothermal modeling tools that are generally available to the public. Finally, the results produced by two hygrothermal models, WUFI and hygIRC, for the prediction of exterior superficial temperatures on facades are compared and analyzed.

Infrared thermography (IRT) is a technique increasingly used in building inspection. If in many applications it is sufficient to analyze the thermal patterns, others exist in which the exact determination of the surface temperature is a fundamental aspect. In these circumstances, the emissivity of the surfaces assumes special relevance, being probably the most important property in the definition of the boundary conditions. However, information on the uncertainty involved in its measurement, as well as the conditions that influence it, is scarce. This article presents an innovative contribution both to the characterization of the emissivity of various construction materials, and to the discussion of emissivity measurement procedures and the attendant uncertainty. In this sense, three experimental campaigns were carried out: T.I, preliminary tests to assess the initial conditions required for an accurate IRT measurement of the emissivity (reference tape and position of the camera); T.II, assessment of the emissivity of nine different building materials, in dry conditions, using the emissometer and the IRT and black tape methods; and T.III, assessment of the emissivity of three materials during the drying process. The results confirmed that emissivity is a crucial parameter for the accurate measurement of surface temperature. Emissivity measurements carried out with IRT (black tape method) and with the emissometer returned meaningful differences when compared with the values available in the literature. This disagreement led to surface temperature differences of up to 7 °C (emissometer versus reference values). This research also highlighted that the moisture content of the materials influences the emissivity values, with fluctuations that can be greater than 10%, and that the effect of moisture is visible even for low values of moisture content.