ABSTRACT
In a series of experiments, where different instationary flow regimes are achieved by controlling the initial and boundary conditions, a standard material container can be equipped by miniaturized TDR-sensors, pressure transducer tensiometer and relative humidity sensors. Thus water content and capillary water potential can be measured simultaneously in high resolution during transient experiments. For the calculation of data a smoothing procedure is applied to remove stochastic errors. The transport characteristics in terms of moisture conductivity are calculated due to thermodynamic rules.
The methods are able to measure the water retention and moisture conductivity simultaneously in a reasonably short time. For calcium silicate panels the required measurement time exceeds 4 weeks, while the static equilibrium reference methods needed more than one year. The results indicated that no unique moisture characteristic can be defined from transient state data. The curves depend on the magnitude of the imposed water content change.
