Resumen

VILLAGRAN, Edwin Andres; JARAMILLO, Jorge Eliecer; LEON PACHECO, Rommel Igor  y  RAMIREZ MATARRITA, Roberto. Diurnal microclimatic behavior, during the dry season, of three structures for protected agriculture in the dry tropic. Cuadernos de Investigación UNED [online]. 2020, vol.12, n.2, pp.433-448. ISSN 1659-4266.  http://dx.doi.org/10.22458/urj.v12i2.2854.

Introduction: In Costa Rica, the use of protected agricultural structures for horticultural production has increased in recent years, although there is little information on their microclimatic behavior. Objective: Our objective was to evaluate the behavior of airflow patterns and their effect on the spatial distribution of temperature and relative humidity inside three types of protected agricultural structure designed for family farming systems. Methods: The study was done in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, in the dry season of 2019, with a computational fluid dynamics model for the development of nine steady state simulations. The 3D model was experimentally validated by collecting climate information in each of the structure prototypes. Results: For the three structures, the goodness-of-fit parameters between measured and simulated data showed mean absolute error and root mean square error values of 0,21-0,44°C and 1,65-3,40% relative humidity. Measured and simulated data had the same trends in the showed; the air flow patterns inside the structures were highly dependent on external wind speed and direction. The temperature and relative humidity conditions inside the three structures had a considerably homogeneous behavior. Conclusions: In the three small protected agricultural structures tested, which are usually used in family agriculture, no significant differences were found for thermal and hygrometric behavior inside each of the structures under these testing conditions.

Palabras clave : Airflow pattern; temperature; relative humidity; family farming; simulation.

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