The article is a contribution for the modelling of heat and mass transfers coupled to strain-stress equations during drying of deformable two-phase media. Both unidirectional and bidirectional configurations are examined. In order to compare the results, one assumes the material of a convectively dried clay slab in two configurations. Numerical calculations of the temperature, drying curves variations and the spatio-temporal distributions of moisture, temperature and drying induced stresses are evaluated. A significant difference was observed between the results obtained for both configurations particularly in intensity of the shear stress that caused cracking.