Towards a better assessment model of transient radon concentrations in dwellings basements for the study of the effectiveness of soil radon mitigation systems designs
Résumé
In order to study effectiveness of soil radon mitigation systems in dwellings basements, it is necessary to develop robust numerical models that can estimate time-varying radon concentration in the basements. However, development of such models is a very challenging topic. Indeed, there are three difficult tasks that have to be solved: i°) to characterize soil and foundation materials hydraulic properties, and geometry, length, and position of cracks inside these materials, ii°) to solve discontinuity due to free gas flow in a basement volume embedded within a tortuous porous material, and iii°) to characterize the dwelling occupation mode by the inhabitants. The purpose of this work is twofold: first, to investigate the performance of a meshed-basement model (BM1), compared to classical mass balance models (BM2), in simulating measured fluctuations in time of point-radon concentration in the basement; and second, to study efficiency of soil depressurization systems (SDS) designs in reducing the higher radon concentrations in basements due to higher under-pressurizations.Application of both models to an experimental dwelling showed that BM1 is more efficient than BM2 in that it can better simulate both measured radon concentration and radon-entry-rate. Numerical SDS-scenarios by using BM1 showed that the basement sub-slab depressurization (SSD) alone is a costly solution for radon mitigation. However, scenarios combining SSD with a sump pumping well (SPW) design in the soil adjacent to the wall, showed to be a good alternative because it involves less energy for soil air extraction.