Using CFD to model the internal climate of greenhouses: past, present and future

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is now a mature engineering design tool and is increasingly being utilised in various horticultural and agricultural studies. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art in the application of CFD for modelling the interaction between the internal climate of glasshouses with external weather conditions and environmental control settings. The first published work in this area by Okushima et al. (1989) was concerned with the behaviour of a small glasshouse with simple boundary conditions. Subsequent published work has related to more complex and realistic situations and at the present time the authors are engaged in building a comprehensive fully three dimensional model of a full-scale commercial Venlo-type glasshouse. The paper presents all the main conclusions to be derived from the present body of published material along with the latest results of the authors' own research programme and points to the direction of future developments in the area of glasshouse control and optimised performance.