THE APPLICATION OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD) IN THE VENTILATION OF AGRICULTURAL BUILDINGS: A REVIEW

Abstract

The effect of heat stress on crop and animal production is immeasurable. The environmental factors majorly influencing heat stress are temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity. The energy required for providing appropriate environments for plants and animals could be reduced through the use of efficient ventilation systems. Appropriate design, evaluation and prediction tools are needed to assess existing systems and determine the changes that are likely to have the most desirable effects on agricultural environments. Improved efficiency of computer systems and the development of better numerical techniques have helped to improve the accuracy of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques and made their application easier. The ability of simulations to represent real situations has also improved. Consequently, CFD has become a common tool in investigating and solving environmental problems within greenhouses and livestock environments. This review provides an up-to-date evaluation of the applications of CFD in the design and improvement of agricultural ventilation systems, outlining the techniques and models used in various studies. The performances of different ventilation systems under various climatic conditions and their ability to meet the environmental requirements of specific crops or livestock were also discussed. In this article as well, the state-of-the-art application of CFD in an agricultural building in Nigeria was discussed. The model equations of the five most commonly used turbulence models in the researches under consideration were likewise itemised.