Natural ventilation efficiency in a twin-span greenhouse using 3D computational fluid dynamics

In this work, a statistical analysis on greenhouse simulations to estimate the efficiency of natural ventilation in a commercial twin-span greenhouse is presented. A numerical simulation approach was adopted using the theory of threedimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD). With this approach, threedimensional patterns for temperature and airspeed inside the greenhouse were generated, using specific boundary conditions. The CFD simulation was applied to an empty twin-span greenhouse with a floor area of 980 m with low density polyethylene cover and two side continuous opening and one roof opening. The simulations assumed a sunny summer day with different airspeeds (0.0, 1.0, 2.0 and 5.0 m/s) in three directions for each non zero airspeed and three different temperature values for each airspeed (20.0, 25.0 and 30.0C).