Impact of the occupancy scenario on the hygrothermal performance of a room

Nowadays, humidity in buildings has become a major concern because it affects their energy performance, the occupants' comfort and health, and the durability of materials simultaneously. To understand the behavior of buildings towards humidity, numerical models are needed. However, the sensitivity of these models to the indoor sources, especially the ones related to the occupants' presence and activities, has not been thoroughly assessed in the literature. This article proposes to introduce a methodology to investigate the impact of the occupancy profiles of presence on the hygrothermal performance of a room. A hygrothermal model at room scale is developed and coupled with a platform called No-MASS, which provides stochastic occupancy scenarios for office buildings. Four occupancy scenarios representative of the scenarios commonly found in the literature are studied: a stochastic scenario, an average scenario derived from multiple stochastic ones, a constant scenario, and the French regulatory scenario. Comparing the results obtained with the different occupancy scenarios underlined a non-negligible impact of the scenario on indoor heat and moisture balance, mainly due to the consideration of a seasonal effect for the stochastic one.