An investigation of the airflow in mushroom growing structures, the development of an improved, three-dimensional solution technique for fluid flow and its evaluation for the modelling of mushroom growing structures

TL;DRAbstract

This thesis is an examination of the airflows in mushroom growing rooms. An experimental investigation of the nature of the flows in Irish tunnels showed them to be of low magnitude at the crop but controllable in principle for single layer growing. It was found that stratification of the airflow in growing tunnels could cause severe reductions in cropping surface airspeed and the operation of the heating system was identified as the main source of this. An alternative air distribution system was shown to have the potential to overcome the effects of heating. Airflow for three level growing systems in tunnels was found to be non-uniform and the use of wall-mounted deflecting plates was shown to have the potential to correct this.
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\nThe provision of air flow solutions for the wide range of new growing systems would be difficult using empirical methods alone and therefore a modelling approach was sought to complement and aid the experimental work.
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\nThe initial mode

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