VENTILATION IN LIVESTOCK HOUSES AND GREENHOUSES
A well-controlled ventilation rate is essential to provide animals and plants in livestock houses and greenhouses with good environment while minimizing additional heating and cooling cost. The quantification of ventilation rate is crucial in terms of control of indoor air quality and emission of pollutants. Especially in naturally-ventilated buildings, measuring the ventilation rate is more elusive because of dynamic and complex air flow patterns induced by natural wind.
WHY DO WE NEED CFD SIMULATION?
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) uses numerical methods to describe fluid flow. The result is a wealth of predictions for flow velocity, temperature and mass concentration.
CFD is a very compelling, non-intrusive, virtual modelling technique with powerful visualisation capabilities and has outstanding potential for analysing complex air flows with advantages of insight, foresight and efficiency.
However, CFD simulation requires a high level of technical expertise. Using a well-known commercial CFD package and hiring a CFD expert are usually costly. The reliability of CFD analysis has been a perennial problem and depends heavily on the skill and experience of the modeller.
NEXT-GENERATION CFD SIMULATION
Next generation of CFD approaches is to replace heavy workloads of CFD experts with the self-modelling CFD application, allowing the practical use of the CFD technique for general users. The developed programme named SYS(Simulate YourSelf) is a handy CFD simulator to analyse air flow patterns in naturally ventilated agricultural buildings and to calculate ventilation rates. Using the SYS, it is expected that general users, such as consultant, researcher and company, can easily work towards quick and practical solutions for ventilation performance. Highly accurate computing solutions are also available for scientific purposes in university.
