Analysis of Thermally Controlled Poultry Housing Using CFD

Abstract

Poultry industry’s development in the past two decades and the need for increased animal protein sources in the hot regions of the world, require the need to develop housing system that is thermally controlled for optimal production. The research was carried out at Federal University of Technology Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. The facility consisted of a broiler house of 6 rooms enclosed by masonry sidewalls at the base and insulated plywood at the upper section of the house with each experimental room equipped with blower, suction fan and heater. The data were monitored at the most critical time of the day – 1 pm during the dry season. Experimental data were recorded using developed and calibrated data logger. The 5 experimental rooms are programed to 5 temperature levels (41, 38, 35, 32 and 29°C) characterizing extreme heat boundary conditions for broilers with fans programmed at 1.5 m/s air velocity. The aim of this study is to evaluate the thermal distribution in solid-wall broiler houses using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The CFD technique allows visualizing air flow according to different running condition for each room for exhaust fans, as well as other parameters. The simulation was used to determine the air temperature variation, inner wall temperature, external temperature, air velocity distribution, external wall heat flux, pressure and wall heat transfer coefficient in all the experimental rooms of poultry house. The simulated air flow pattern and temperature distribution in the experimental rooms were analyzed and the result revealed increase room temperature as the preset room temperature increases. However, the velocity profile in all the room shows buildup of air at the outlet vent due to turbulence created by the suction fans. The pressure profile across the rooms was relatively the same.