A MATHEMATICAL MODEL TO ENABLE THE VIRTUAL COMMISSIONING SIMULATION OF WICK SOILLESS CULTIVATIONS

Soilless culture is seen as a promising tool in the vision of food security due to its ability to provide intensive food production in limited areas with more efficient utilization of the resources. In this context, flexible test-benches can be developed to investigate optimal fertigation strategies to maximize returns on inputs while preserving resources. However, flexible test-benches are more complex than traditional soilless systems since the control software must concurrently manage different fertigation strategies, and a larger number of sensors and actuators is utilized. In this work, the use of the Virtual Commissioning (VC) simulation is embraced for supporting the design of the control software of flexible test-benches and its functional verification. A mathematical model that reproduces the discrete-event behaviour of the physical system is proposed and applied to a case study for demonstrating that the introduced modelling approach enables the VC simulation of flexible testbenches for wick soilless cultivations. Given the importance of the food security challenge in the 'worldwide landscape', it is expected that this work may enhance the investigation in the research topic of farming strategies for soilless culture.