The expansion of protected agriculture has technological, climatic, and topographic limitations. The agricultural regions of Costa Rica use the greenhouse concept and adapt it to its conditions. The objective of this work was to describe the variation in temperature and humidity in a greenhouse ventilated passively and on land with a more than 45% slope. To evaluate the environment inside the greenhouse, temperature and humidity variations were measured with a weather station installed outside of the greenhouse to measure the external environment. Inside the greenhouse, 17 sensors were placed to measure the temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH). During data recording inside the greenhouse, tomato crops were in the fruit formation stage, and pepper was less than one week old. Six scenarios were tested to determine the air temperature and humidity dynamic under different climatic conditions. An evaluation of the greenhouse environment was carried out employing an analysis of variance of temperature and RH to establish if there are significant differences in the direction of the slope of the cross-section. The uniformity of temperature and RH do not present stratifications derived from wind currents that can affect the effective production of these crops.
Computational fluid dynamics has been successfully used in protected agriculture to simulate greenhouse weather as physical processes. The variables involved are velocity, wind direction related to either absolute or relative humidity, temperature as well as deficit vapor pressure, and carbon dioxide, among others. The research evolution is changing from the traditional validation of new designs and management to testing efficient production with less environmental pollution. This work points out this kind of assessment based on the physical principles of conservation of mass, momentum, and energy. Constitutive relationships like Darcy-Forchheimer porosity model in the momentum equation as well as the geometry and physical properties of the materials involved are needed to fulfill the particular solutions of temperature, wind, and humidity. This chapter is enhanced by the effect of solar radiation in more processes like crop transpiration with dynamical meshes and condensation.
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