Abstract In systems of coupled transport processes the question of the appropriate driving potentials is a point of discussion. In this article, three different approaches to derive models for transport currents are systematically compared. According to a general linear approach, an arbitrary full set of independent state variables and material properties is sufficient to describe any transport current. This approach is derived here from a symmetry principle. Thermodynamic and micromechanical approaches are more complex and even less general, but they allow additional statements about the transport coefficients and they reduce the number of transport processes. In the thermodynamic approach the additional information stems from the calculation of the entropy production rate; the micromechanical approach involves a microphysical model of the considered porous system. As a practical example, the three derivation schemes are applied to the often-encountered case of non-hysteretic heat and moisture transport in homogeneous building materials. It is shown, how the general state variables of a porous system are reduced to only two. Then from the general linear approach it can be seen, that all equations for the moisture transport current using a main driving potential (e.g. moisture content, vapour pressure, chemical potential) and an independent secondary driving potential (e.g. temperature, liquid pressure) are equivalent, without recurrence to the thermodynamic or micromechanical approach. However, the transport coefficients are arbitrary phenomenological functions depending on the two state variables. Based on a literature survey it is shown, which additional statements can be made in the thermodynamic and in the micromechanical approach. The latter yields the pressure-driven model (vapour and liquid pressure as the two driving potentials). Finally it is shown, what is to be expected, if in more complex systems the number of state variables increases.

Keywords Moisture diffusion - Moisture conduction - Coupled heat and moisture - Thermodiffusion - State variables - Building materials - Driving potentials - Linear models

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