Global existence of weak solution to the heat and moisture transport system in fibrous porous media

TL;DR

This paper proves the global existence of weak solutions for a complex, coupled heat and moisture transfer model in fibrous porous media, relevant to textile industry applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical approach to establish global weak solutions for a degenerate, strongly coupled parabolic system modeling heat and moisture transfer.

Findings

Established global existence of weak solutions

Utilized physical properties of gas convection in the proof

Handled degeneracy and strong coupling in the system

Abstract

This paper is concerned with theoretical analysis of a heat and moisture transfer model arising from textile industries, which is described by a degenerate and strongly coupled parabolic system. We prove the global (in time) existence of weak solution by constructing an approximate solution with some standard smoothing. The proof is based on the physcial nature of gas convection, in which the heat (energy) flux in convection is determined by the mass (vapor) flux in convection.