Dominique Derome

Université de Sherbrooke | UdeS · Department of Civil Engineering

Meteorological mesoscale models with different urban parametrization are used to predict the local urban climate at 250 m resolution. The authors propose a hybrid machine learning approach to improve the mesoscale prediction accuracy using measured air temperature data from a sensor network and remove simulation bias. The simulation of the urban cl...

We introduce a novel methodological advancement by clustering paired near-surface air temperature with the planetary boundary layer height to characterize intra-city clusters for analytics. To illustrate this approach, we analyze three heatwaves (HWs): the 2019 HW in Paris, the 2018 HW in Montreal, and the 2017 HW in Zurich. We assess cluster-based...

The evaporation process in porous media typically experiences three main periods, among which the first period, named the constant rate period (CRP), performs most efficiently in removing liquid. We aim to prolong the CRP to very low degrees of saturation (S) and increase its evaporation rate by playing with heterogeneity in wettability and pore si...

The relationship between Urban Heat Island (UHI) phenomenon and cooling energy use in buildings has been widely observed and studied. In this paper, the effect of land use (river, urbanization, and vegetation) is investigated to examine how vegetation and river can dampen the effect of the UHI in various locations and its influence on the cooling e...

The impact of trees during heat waves can be diverse, as their interaction with their surroundings depends on several parameters that modify shading, ventilation potential and transpiration rate. A multiscale coupled model is presented that allows the detailed analysis of the local impact of vegetation as a mitigation measure for urban heat islands...

The convective drying of porous materials is studied at the pore scale using a two-component two-phase Lattice Boltzmann model. Capillary pumping from coarse to fine pores is found to enhance the drying in first drying period at high rate. A ‘toy’ model of four connected channels is developed to design the drying of porous materials. This approach...

Nowadays, cities are frequently exposed to heatwaves, worsening outdoor thermal comfort and increasing cooling energy demand in summer. Urban forestry is seen as one of the viable and preferable solutions to combat extreme heat events and urban heat island (UHI) in times of climate change. While many cities have initiated tree-planting programs in...

A meteorological mesoscale model is used to predict the local urban climate at 250 m resolution. The authors propose a hybrid machine learning approach to improve the prediction accuracy and remove simulation bias. Two case studies are presented to show the improvements of the simulation accuracy. Based on the hybrid model results, using cooling de...

Rising demand for space cooling has been placing enormous strain on various technological, environmental, and societal dimensions, resulting in issues related to energy consumption, environmental sustainability, health and well-being, affordability, and equity. Holistic approaches that combine energy efficiency optimization, policy-making, and soci...

The use of urban vegetation and ventilation corridors can be beneficial in terms of outdoor thermal comfort. High-rise buildings modify urban ventilation by redirecting incident wind flow, which can further complicate local thermal conditions. The present study investigates the interaction of building morphology and urban vegetation during heat wav...

In this paper, we propose a numerical model to simulate gas–liquid–solid interaction problems, coupling the lattice Boltzmann method and discrete element method (LBM–DEM). A cascaded LBM is used to simulate the liquid–gas flow field using a pseudopotential interaction model for describing the liquid–gas multiphase behaviour. A classical DEM resorti...

Prevailing absorbents like wood-derived porous scaffolds or polymeric aerogels are normally featured with hierarchical porous structures. In former molecular simulation studies, sorption, deformation, and coupled sorption-deformation have been studied for single-scale materials, but scarcely for materials where micropores (<2 nm) and mesopores (2-5...

Emerging atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) technologies hold promise for water supply to underdeveloped regions with limited access to liquid water resources. The prevailing AWH systems, including condensation- or sorption-based, mostly rely on a single mechanism limited by working conditions and inferior performance. Here, we synergistically inte...

A two-dimensional (2-D) double-distribution lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is implemented to study isothermal drying of a colloidal suspension considering local nanoparticle effects. The two LBMs solve isothermal two-phase flow and nanoparticle transport, respectively. The three local nanoparticle effects on the fluid dynamics considered in this pa...

Diffusion of molecules in porous media is a critical process that is fundamental to numerous chemical, physical, and biological applications. The prevailing theoretical frameworks are challenged when explaining the complex dynamics resulting from the highly tortuous host structure and strong guest-host interactions, especially when the pore size ap...

This brief communication interprets three decades' evolution of building cooling demand of urban and rural areas through the lens of five representative cities, i.e., Hong Kong, Sydney, Montreal, Zurich, and London. The upward trend and extremes in building cooling demand, estimated from cooling degree hours (CDH) using meteorological data from 199...

We present a comprehensive study of nanoparticle deposition from drying of colloidal droplets. By means of lattice Boltzmann modeling and theoretical analysis, various deposition patterns, including mountain-like, uniform and coffee ring, as well as un-/symmetrical multiring/mountain-like patterns are achieved. The ratio of nanoparticles deposited...

Nowadays, cities are frequently exposed to heatwaves, worsening the outdoor thermal comfort and increasing cooling energy demand in summer. Urban forestry is seen as one of the viable and preferable solutions to combating extreme heat events and urban heat island (UHI) in times of climate change. While many cities have initiated tree-planting progr...

A mesoscopic lattice Boltzmann model is implemented for modelling isothermal two-component evaporation in porous media. The model is based on the pseudopotential multiphase model with two components to mimic the phase-change component (e.g. water and its vapour) and the non-condensible component (e.g. dry air), and the cascaded collision operator i...

Urban areas are experiencing excessive heating. Addressing the heat is a challenging but essential task where not only engineering and climatic knowledge matters but also a deep understanding of social and economic dimensions. We synthesize the state of the art in heat mitigation technologies and develop an 'ITE index' framework that evaluates the...

Beating excessive urban heat calls for a whole-system approach, where several individual mitigation measures have to be implemented together. We assess the use of green walls, green roofs, reflective roofs, thermally efficient buildings, high-efficiency indoor cooling, urban forestry, evaporative pavement, and constructed shade for directly reducin...

Reaction kinetics of nanoparticles can be controlled by tuning the Peclet number (Pe) as it is an essential parameter in synthesis of multi-sized nanoparticles. Herein, we propose to implement a self-driven multi-dimension microchannels reactor (MMR) for the one droplet synthesis of multi-sized nanoparticles. By carefully controlling the Pe at the...

Imbibition in a strongly wetting square tube with corner flow can be described by an interacting capillary bundle model, where the first sub-capillary describes the main meniscus flow while the others describe corner film flow. In this work, an advanced modified interacting capillary bundle model (MICBM) is developed to simulate imbibition dynamics...

Accurate estimation of wind-driven rain (WDR) load on building facades is of paramount importance for the assessment of moisture-induced damage risks. The response of the facade depends on the used meteorological data, which can show significant variation over time, especially considering climate change. In this study, a statistical approach based...

Urban heat island (UHI) and the increased frequency of heatwaves due to climate change reduce thermal comfort inside buildings leading to increased use of air conditioning systems. In this research, the impact of the actual local climate on the cooling energy demand of residential buildings in Montreal is studied. Building energy simulations (BES)...

Pronounced fingering of the waterfront is observed for in-plane wicking in thin, aligned electrospun fibrous membranes. We hypothesize that a perturbation in capillary pressure triggers the onset of fingering, which grows in a non-local manner based on the waterfront gradient. Vertical and horizontal wicking in thin electrospun membranes of poly(et...

Wetting films can develop in the corners of angular pores under strong wetting conditions. Modeling the dynamics of corner film remains elusive using direct numerical simulations because of the significant scale difference between main meniscus and corner film flow. In this paper, the modified interacting capillary bundle model (ICB), developed in...

Hypothesis Wicking flow in the wale direction of knit fabrics is slowed by capillary pressure minima during the transition at yarn contacts. The characteristic pore structure of yarns leads to an unfavorable free energy evolution and is the cause of these minima. Experiments Time-resolved synchrotron tomographic microscopy is employed to study the...

In this work, a numerical model for isothermal liquid-vapor phase change (evaporation) of the two-component air-water system is proposed based on the pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method. Through the Chapman-Enskog multiscale analysis, we show that the model can correctly recover the macroscopic governing equations of the multicomponent multiph...

The spontaneous imbibition of a liquid within porous media, known as wicking, can display uncommon features in textiles and yarns. Yarns exhibited step-wise wicking dynamics not captured by current models. Hypothesis Wicking dynamics in yarns not only depend on inter-fiber pore filling, but are mainly determined by the pore-to-pore transition proc...

Emerging atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) technologies promise water supply to underdeveloped regions that have no access to liquid water resources. The prevailing AWH systems, including condensation- or sorption-based, mostly rely on a single mechanism and thus have a limited range of working conditions and inferior performance. In this study, w...

Plants modify the climate and provide natural cooling through transpiration. However, plant response is not only dependent on the atmospheric evaporative demand due to the combined effects of wind speed, air temperature, humidity, and solar radiation, but is also dependent on the water transport within the plant leaf-xylem-root system. These intera...

The classical D 2-Law states that the square of the droplet diameter decreases linearly with time during its evaporation process, i.e., D 2 (t) = D 2 0 −Kt, where D 0 is the droplet initial diameter and K is the evaporation constant. Though the law has been widely verified by experiments, considerable deviations are observed in many cases. In this...

Vapor sorption in hygroscopic porous materials is accompanied by latent heat release/storage, which can influence indoor thermal comfort and building heating and cooling energy consumption. There is a need to better understand the coupled vapor and heat transport during adsorption and desorption. In this study, longitudinal spruce samples are expos...

The moisture-induced shape memory effect (SME) is one of the most intriguing phenomena of wood, where wood can stably retain a certain deformed shape and, upon moisture sorption, can recover the original shape. Despite the long history of wood utilization, the SME is still not fully understood. Combining molecular dynamics (MD) and finite-element (...

Due to the need to preserve the façades of valuable historical buildings, internal thermal insulation is often the only measure for energy retrofitting for such class of buildings. However, internal thermal insulation may lead to moisture damage risks. In this study, the influence of seven parameters, namely water absorption coefficient and diffusi...

Due to climate change, considering future rain event patterns and increased average temperatures, wind-driven rain exposure of buildings can increase. In order to assess the future damage risk related to moisture, it is essential to take the future wind-driven rain load into account. Computational fluid dynamics simulations of wind-driven rain are...

Sorption of water vapour in hygroscopic porous materials is associated with latent heat release and absorption. This phenomenon should be taken into account to achieve a better understanding of the coupled transfer of vapour and heat in hygroscopic porous materials. In this paper, water vapour adsorption and desorption in the longitudinal direction...

Wood is known to swell substantially during moisture adsorption and shrink during desorption. These deformations may lead to wood damage in the form of cracking and disjoining of wooden components in e.g. floor or windows. Two swelling mechanisms may be distinguished: reversible swelling/shrinkage and moisture-induced shape memory effect. In the la...

Drying at macroscale shows a first drying period with constant drying rate followed by second drying period showing a receding moisture front, phenomena that can be tailored upon need. In order to study the drying of materials, we present a new hybrid computational method, where the dynamics of the liquid-vapor interfaces is modelled by lattice Bol...

A multiscale coupled model is presented that allows for the detailed analysis of the local impact of urban heat island mitigation measures. The model uses coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with unsteady heat and moisture transport (HAM) in porous urban materials in order to take into account the dynamic heat and moisture storag...

Parts of the building envelope that frequently receive high amounts of rain are usually exposed to a higher risk of deterioration due to moisture. Determination of such locations can thus help with the assessment of moisture-induced damage risks. This study performs computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of wind-driven rain (WDR) on the Par...

Intermolecular interactions at the fiber-matrix interface strongly affect the hygromechanical behavior and overall mechanical performance of hydrophilic cellulosic nanocomposites. The mechanics of a model interface consisting of cellulose and galactoglucomannan, inspired by the natural material wood, is investigated by molecular simulations over th...

Despite the thousands of years of wood utilization, the mechanisms of wood hygromechanics remain barely elucidated, owing to the nanoscopic system size and highly coupled physics. This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to systematically characterize wood polymers, their mixtures, interface, and composites, yielding an unprecedented micromec...

Drying of porous media is governed by a combination of evaporation and movement of the liquid phase within the porous structure. Contact angle hysteresis induced by surface roughness is shown to influence multi-phase flows, such as contact line motion of droplet, phase distribution during drainage and coffee ring formed after droplet drying in cons...

In this work, a hybrid method coupling a pseudo-potential lattice Boltzmann model (LBM) and a pore network model (PNM) to simulate drying in porous media is proposed. Based on the watershed method, the porous medium is firstly decomposed into pore regions. According to the liquid–vapor phase distribution at a given time, the pore regions are furthe...

What are the mechanisms at play in the spontaneous imbibition dynamics in polyethylene terephthalate filament yarns at pore scale? Processes at pore scale such as waiting times between the filling of two neighboring pores, as observed in special irregular porous media, like yarns, may overrule the predicted behavior by well-known laws such as Washb...

When a droplet impacts a fabric mesh at a sufficiently high impact velocity, it not only spreads over the fabric but also penetrates its pores. To determine the influence of this liquid penetration of the fabric on droplet spreading on thin fabric meshes, we measured the droplet spreading ratio on fabric with and without an underlying substrate usi...

Drying of colloidal suspension towards the exploitation of the resultant nanoparticle deposition has been applied in different research and engineering fields. Recent experimental studies have shown that neck-based thermal structure (NTS) by colloidal nanoparticle deposition between microsize filler particle configuration (FPC) can significantly en...

Spontaneous imbibition in an angular tube with corner films is a fundamental problem in many scientific and engineering processes. In this study, a modified interacting capillary bundle model is developed to describe the liquid imbibition dynamics in a square tube with corner films. The square tube is decomposed into several interacting subcapillar...

Crystalline cellulose, the most abundant natural polymer on earth, features exceptional physical and mechanical properties. Using atomistic simulation, this study reports the mechanical behavior of cellulose-cellulose nanocrystal hydrophilic interface and systematically examines the impact of loading direction, interfacial moisture, misalignment an...

Thermal management is one of the major challenges facing the development of three-dimensional (3D) chip stacks. Recently, experimental studies have shown that neck-based thermal structure (NTS) between chip layers formed by drying of colloidal suspension in cavity filled with micro-size particles can improve the vertical heat conduction threefold....

As cities and their population are subjected to climate change and urban heat islands, it is paramount to have the means to understand the local urban climate and propose mitigation measures, especially at neighbourhood, local and building scales. A framework is presented, where the urban climate is studied by coupling a meteorological model to a b...