CFD PREDICTION OF THE DISTRIBUTION AND DEPOSITION OF FUNGAL SPORES IN A GREENHOUSE

The scope of this paper is the description of a specific module associated to a conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics model and developed to compute the effects of soil, insect-proof nets and vegetation rows on the deposition of Botrytis spores, i.e. spores with a mean diameter of ten micrometers.
The objective of this work is aimed at the simulation of spore concentration patterns in a greenhouse in relation with the external conditions and particularly the spore concentration.
The equations of flow are solved with the Fluent® CFD code and the standard k-ε turbulence model.
The specific model consists in the determination of sink terms in the equation of transport of a scalar that corresponds to the particle concentration in the airflow.
Three kinds of sink terms are considered for the soil, for the insect-proof nets and for the vegetation rows.
The necessary parameters for the parameterisation of the model together with the spore concentration and climate boundary conditions were determined in an experimental study for a rose greenhouse with roof and lateral vents equipped with insect-proof nets.
The effect of the crop rows explains the heterogeneity of spore concentration in the crop and in its vicinity.
The influence of the soil is limited to a thin boundary layer far from the greenhouse that grows windward of the greenhouse near the lateral vents.

International Symposium on Greenhouse Cooling

J.C. Roy, T. Boulard, L.B. Lee, M. Chave, C. Nieto

greenhouse, ventilation CFD, spore deposition, Botrytis Cinerea, insect-proof net

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2006.719.31