Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Computational Fluid Dynamic analyses in order to improve portable ducted fan performance for crops spray penetration
Submission Author:
Guillermo Campello Fernandez O'Keeffe , SP , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Guillermo Campello Fernandez O'Keeffe, Vicente Luiz Scalon, Rodolfo Castanho Fernandes
Presenter: Guillermo Campello Fernandez O'Keeffe
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0655
Abstract
For pest and disease control in agriculture, products (chemical or organically) are used for plant protection. The products are sprayed in the crop, and if it reaches a certain amount of the surface area of the leaf, the chances of protection are higher. As there are several types of leaf structures, the spray may not penetrate satisfactorily in all types of crops, due to the high leaf density in some of them, and it may leave part of the crop unprotected. In order to help the spray penetration into denser crops, ventilation is used in spraying. In this way, the air flow causes a certain excitation in the leaves, allowing the sprayed product to reach leaves in the center of the crop. In the past, the interior of denser regions could be reached with greater applications of products, which resulted in a high consumption per hectare. With the advent of Precision Agriculture, studies to reduce agricultural defensive consumption per hectare were increasingly carried out, and with that new application technologies were emerging. Among them, the aid of air in spraying. For crops where management is possible with tractor-operated sprayers, many solutions have already been developed. To serve the small producer, who does not need to have large equipment, as well as to enable spraying in regions where such equipment cannot arrive, it is necessary a portable sprayer that is assisted by air. For this, a fan is necessary to produce the air flow excitation in the crop. To meet the ergonomic requirement of a portable sprayer, the target is the smallest size of ducted fan possible. And to meet the productivity requirement for agriculture, CFD will enhance the design exploration of the proposed ducted fan (rotational speed higher than 15,000 rpm), where the velocity of the air flow in the crop must be effective to leaves excitation, with the lowest power consumption, to increase the efficiency of the fan.
Keywords
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), Turbomachinery, Efficiency, agricultural machinery
