Evaluation of airflow pattern and thermal behavior of the arched greenhouses with designed roof ventilation scenarios using CFD simulation

Natural ventilation is an effective energy-saving strategy conducive to promoting sustainable agricultural production. A comprehensive numerical simulation is performed to predict the airflow pattern and thermal behavior in different arched greenhouses. The defined arc chord angle and position angle are employed to examine the natural ventilation process and corresponding roof vent scenarios. The numerical simulation is compared with the experimental data and good agreements are observed. Various configurations of ventilated structures, wind conditions and ventilation layouts are simulated on a high-resolution polyhedral grid based on a grid sensitivity analysis, which is beneficial to the optimization of greenhouse cooling combined with the water circulation heat collection system. The cooling effect in summer is analyzed by estimating the ventilation flow rate and microclimate inhomogeneity. The results demonstrate that the position angle of 85° of the arched greenhouses is an optimum ventilation direction and its impact on the microclimate is marginally affected by the change of the ventilation structure. The designed ventilation scheme has perfect air exchange capacity and cooling effect because the average air temperature can be reduced by 1.5°C more than the existing greenhouse in 10 minutes of ventilation. Likewise, the results show that the temperature and velocity inhomogeneities are approximately decreased by 33.3% and 11.89%, respectively. The practical value of the research is expected to provide basic quantitative conclusions for evaluating the natural ventilation performance.