Two streams in, one condition out
Every air handler starts with a mixing box: outdoor air for ventilation, return air from the space, and one blend leaving for the coil. What comes out is a mass-weighted average of what went in.
— T-m equals f T-o-a plus one minus f, T-r-a. is the mixed-air temperature, the outdoor air and the return air, all in °C. is the outdoor-air fraction — the share of the total mass that came from outside, a bare number between 0 and 1 (a damper at 25 % is ). The subscripts are the whole convention, so fix them once: oa is outdoor, ra is return, m is the mixture, and is always the OUTDOOR share, never the return's.
The same weighting runs the moisture: . Two quantities that mix by mass — temperature and humidity ratio — and both use the identical fractions. Read the relation backwards and it becomes a commissioning tool: , which is how a technician catches a damper actuator that is lying about its position.
The sanity rail: the mixture always lands BETWEEN the two streams and nearer the bigger one. A blend outside that range means the fractions went onto the wrong streams.
One more ratio, because it appears on charts you did not draw. The degree of saturation is — mu equals W over W-s, with the Greek letter mu, said “mew”. is the humidity ratio present and the humidity ratio saturated air would have at the SAME temperature and pressure; the units cancel and is a proportion. It is not the relative humidity, though it is always close: is a ratio of PRESSURES and is a ratio of MASSES, and is always the slightly smaller of the two. At 24 °C and 50 % RH, is about 49.3 %. Older charts — and some European ones still — draw their curved lines as percentage saturation, which is . The lines look identical. Read the legend.