GREENHOUSE AIR DYNAMICS IN FOLIAGE

Crop growth in greenhouses requires continuous air recirculation and removal rates in order to optimize growing conditions. Adequate air dynamics happening at the leaf and plant level serve to increase energy and mass exchange, which means providing better conditions for photosynthesis. However, there is an unavoidable variation among plants since air dynamics is different due to the various leaf and plant conditions such as air pitch angle, leaf position and density, size and boundary layer conditions. Air dynamics in the first plant will affect those located in succeeding order depending on the arrays, growing stage and density of them. This work aims to find out changes at the ventilation rate based on the wind speed variation and different growing stages in a three span greenhouse located in San Luis Potosi, Mexico A typical array of plants for three different growing stages are simulated in lumped approach through porous media using Computational Fluid Dynamics aiding to determine ventilation rates for the experimental wind speed range found at the green¬house location.