Microwave detection and quantification of water hidden in and on building materials: implications for healthy buildings and microbiome studies
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Horsley, Andrew; Thaler, David S.
Description
Background Excess water in all its forms (moisture, dampness, hidden water) in buildings negatively impacts occupant health but is hard to reliably detect and quantify. Recent advances in through-wall imaging recommend microwaves as a tool with a high potential to noninvasively detect and quantify water throughout buildings. Methods Microwaves in both transmission and reflection (radar) modes were used to perform a simple demonstration of the detection of water both on and hidden within...[Show more]
dc.contributor.author | Horsley, Andrew | |
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dc.contributor.author | Thaler, David S. | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-02-19T00:42:32Z | |
dc.date.available | 2019-02-19T00:42:32Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1471-2334 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/156424 | |
dc.description.abstract | Background Excess water in all its forms (moisture, dampness, hidden water) in buildings negatively impacts occupant health but is hard to reliably detect and quantify. Recent advances in through-wall imaging recommend microwaves as a tool with a high potential to noninvasively detect and quantify water throughout buildings. Methods Microwaves in both transmission and reflection (radar) modes were used to perform a simple demonstration of the detection of water both on and hidden within building materials. Results We used both transmission and reflection modes to detect as little as 1 mL of water between two 7 cm thicknesses of concrete. The reflection mode was also used to detect 1 mL of water on a metal surface. We observed oscillations in transmitted and reflected microwave amplitude as a function of microwave wavelength and water layer thickness, which we attribute to thin-film interference effects. Conclusions Improving the detection of water in buildings could help design, maintenance, and remediation become more efficient and effective and perhaps increase the value of microbiome sequence data. Microwave characterization of all forms of water throughout buildings is possible; its practical development would require new collaborations among microwave physicists or engineers, architects, building engineers, remediation practitioners, epidemiologists, and microbiologists. | |
dc.description.sponsorship | Funding was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. | |
dc.format | 8 pages | |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.language.iso | en_AU | |
dc.publisher | BioMed Central | |
dc.rights | The Author(s) | |
dc.rights.uri | (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) | |
dc.source | BMC Infectious Diseases | |
dc.subject | Aquametry | |
dc.subject | Dampness | |
dc.subject | Humidity | |
dc.subject | Microbiome | |
dc.subject | Microwave | |
dc.subject | Moisture | |
dc.subject | Mold | |
dc.subject | Sick-building-syndrome | |
dc.title | Microwave detection and quantification of water hidden in and on building materials: implications for healthy buildings and microbiome studies | |
dc.type | Journal article | |
dc.rights.holder | © | |
local.description.notes | Imported from Springer Nature | |
local.identifier.citationvolume | 19 | |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2019-01-11 | |
dc.date.issued | 2019-01-18 | |
local.identifier.ariespublication | u3102795xPUB649 | |
local.publisher.url | https://www.biomedcentral.com/ | |
local.type.status | Published Version | |
local.contributor.affiliation | Horsley, Andrew, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University | |
local.contributor.affiliation | Thaler, David S., Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University | |
local.bibliographicCitation.issue | 1 | |
local.identifier.doi | 10.1186/s12879-019-3720-1 | |
dc.date.updated | 2019-01-20T09:05:23Z | |
dcterms.accessRights | Open Access | |
dc.rights.license | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. | |
Collections | ANU Research Publications |
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