Review of livestock buildings modeled with CFD techniques

Abstract

[EN] The control of the indoor environmental factors (air velocity, temperature, humidity) allows improving the thermal comfort area in automated farms. A deep knowledge of these factors and how they are distributed in the farm allows reducing the effects of thermal stress. In this article, the authors review the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models in the climate control of livestock farms and propose recommendations obtained from different farm models. The use of CFD tools and the validation with experimental results has been widely evaluated in the literature. Both real and reduced, scaled farms were evaluated by different authors, regarding the behaviour of airflow, the appropriateness of turbulence models and the use of measurement equipment. Natural and mechanical ventilation have different challenges in practice, and therefore both have been subject of study. Occupied and empty farms were used for validation, and different CFD analysis were used to determine the distribution of air velocity, temperature and humidity. By means of these analyses the environmental parameters have been evaluated as a function of changing farm design and management: the change of building dimensions, the roof geometry, the height of the air inlet openings, the opening angle of air inlets, and the presence of equipment and animals in different sections of the farm.