COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS (CFD) SIMULATION ON SWINE FACILITIES

Abstract

The study of animal environment is a highly relevant topic since it affects animal welfare and production rates compromising the producer profitability. Ventilation systems become essential for control of the environment, being necessary to carry out efficient ventilation projects. Furthermore, the producers do not have equipment for evaluating in detail environment in terms of visualization and distribution of the variables that interfere in the process. In order to solve these problems, tools such as CFD, already used in other fields of engineering, has been applied in animal environment studies. This project aims to determine the best airflow profiles throw the simulation of different arrangements of air entrances (inlets and cooling pad) and air vents (exhaust) in order to promote proper air renewal, and consequently better efficiency of the equipments involved in the facility acclimatization. Internationally, this project is unprecedented since determine the openings positions, not only size and angles in systems with cross-ventilation that have already been conducted by renowned researchers from the CFD modeling in animal production area, such as In -Bok Lee, Thomas Norton, Eliseo Bustamante and Daniel Berckmans Another innovative factor is the simulation of the 790 animals gestating sows within the facility using parameterized mesh (which will appear on the geometry of the actual number of animals and this will be defined by mesh structured hexahedral) which turns the simulation more accurate and close to reality. Unlike other studies conducted in this area, this project aims to perform an independence test for the mesh ensuring that the final results are not influenced by the density of the mesh. Another major challenge of this study will be the validation of the model using the temperature and air velocity comparison considering the presence of animals. It is expected that the evaluation of this study confirm the ability of CFD enable detailed observation of phenomena related to the thermal variables, and to propose improvements in ventilation system for the development of swine females. (AU)