Exploring Ventilation Efficiency in Poultry Buildings: The Validation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in a Cross-Mechanically Ventilated Broiler Farm

Broiler production in modern poultry farms commonly uses mechanical ventilation systems. This mechanical ventilation requires an amount of electric energy and a high level of investment in technology. Nevertheless, broiler production is affected by periodic problems of mortality because of thermal s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2013-05, Vol.6 (5), p.2605-2623
Main Authors: Bustamante, Eliseo, García-Diego, Fernando-Juan, Calvet, Salvador, Estellés, Fernando, Beltrán, Pedro, Hospitaler, Antonio, Torres, Antonio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Animal welfare
broilers
Construction
cross-mechanical ventilation
design
Efficiency
Electronic mail systems
Energy consumption
Engineering
Environmental conditions
Farms
Fluid dynamics
Generalized linear models
Heat
Humidity
Livestock
livestock building
Mortality
Poultry
poultry farm
Simulation
Velocity
Ventilation
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Broiler production in modern poultry farms commonly uses mechanical ventilation systems. This mechanical ventilation requires an amount of electric energy and a high level of investment in technology. Nevertheless, broiler production is affected by periodic problems of mortality because of thermal stress, thus being crucial to explore the ventilation efficiency. In this article, we analyze a cross-mechanical ventilation system focusing on air velocity distribution. In this way, two methodologies were used to explore indoor environment in livestock buildings: Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and direct measurements for verification and validation (V&V) of CFD. In this study, a validation model using a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) was conducted to compare these methodologies. The results showed that both methodologies were similar in results: the average of air velocities values were 0.60 ± 0.56 m s-1 for CFD and 0.64 ± 0.54 m s-1 for direct measurements. In conclusion, the air velocity was not affected by the methodology (CFD or direct measurements), and the CFD simulations were therefore validated to analyze indoor environment of poultry farms and its operations. A better knowledge of the indoor environment may contribute to reduce the demand of electric energy, increasing benefits and improving the thermal comfort of broilers.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en6052605