Study of ventilation strategies, in agricultural buildings through CFD modeling and experimental analysis.

Environmental control in agricultural and agro-industrial buildings is a very important and topical subject which falls within the domain of precision agriculture and smart food processing. There is a growing interest in the study of systems able to combine active and passive environmental control techniques and in the development of methodologies for modeling and simulating the environmental conditions in the agro-industrial sector. These ones need a process of validation and experimental calibration, but they can investigate specific aspects and variations of the thermo-fluidynamic phenomena involved in the control of environmental parameters. The computational fluid dynamic application (CFD) can give these opportunities and it has been used to study animal comfort in farms, distribution of temperature and humidity in greenhouses, to define structural improvement of greenhouses and to investigate effective ventilation strategies. This thesis is focused on the ventilation aspects in agricultural buildings, with the aim of considering improvement actions to optimize and act on airflow conditions in an experimental greenhouse and in a cellar, where climate control is extremely important. The natural ventilation of a glass greenhouse has been investigated with a particular focus on the effects of internal shading screens on the internal fluid-dynamic and on the crop growing conditions. A deep focus on the characterization of this type of screens has been carried out, with the aim of identifying applicable methodologies for this purpose. Finally, a smart system has been created to be placed in a cellar, for the improvement of the air flows around the barrels, which would thus prevent the molds formation and avoid air stagnation areas. Different configurations have been analyzed to identify the optimal design of the system. In conclusion, CFD approach has allowed to reach conclusions on possible decisions or strategies to improve the ventilation for improving the production and food quality conditions.