Identification of the hygrothermal properties of a building envelope material by the Covariance Matrix Adaptation evolution strategy

Simon Rouchier (1) , Monika Woloszyn (1) , Yannick Kedowide (1) , Timea Béjat (2, 3)

1 LOCIE - LabOratoire proCédés énergIe bâtimEnt
2 DTS - Département des Technologies Solaires
3 INES - Institut National de L'Energie Solaire

This paper proposes the application of the Covariance Matrix Adaptation (CMA) evolution strategy for the identification of building envelope materials hygrothermal properties. All material properties are estimated on the basis of local temperature and relative humidity measurements, by solving the inverse heat and moisture transfer problem. The applicability of the identification procedure is demonstrated in two stages: first, a numerical benchmark is developed and used as to show the potential identification accuracy, justify the choice for a Tikhonov reg-ularisation term in the fitness evaluation, and propose a method for its appropriate tuning. Then, the procedure is applied on the basis of experimental measurements from an instrumented test cell, and compared to the experimental characterisation of the observed material. Results show that an accurate estimation of all hygrothermal properties of a building material is feasible, if the objective function of the inverse problem is carefully defined.

Mots clés: identification; evolutionary algorithm; CMA; heat and moisture transfer; modelling

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation; Thermique [physics.class-ph]

Simon Rouchier, Monika Woloszyn, Yannick Kedowide, Timea Béjat. Identification of the hygrothermal properties of a building envelope material by the Covariance Matrix Adaptation evolution strategy. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 2015, ⟨10.1080/19401493.2014.996608⟩. ⟨hal-01288774⟩