Numerical Simulation of Multi-Span Greenhouse Structures

María S. Fernández-García, Pablo Vidal-López, Desirée Rodríguez-Robles, José R. Villar-García and Rafael Agujetas
Additional contact information
María S. Fernández-García: Department of Forest and Agricultural Engineering, School of Agricultural Engineering, University of Extremadura, Av. Adolfo Suarez s/n, 06071 Badajoz, Spain
Pablo Vidal-López: Department of Forest and Agricultural Engineering, School of Agricultural Engineering, University of Extremadura, Av. Adolfo Suarez s/n, 06071 Badajoz, Spain
Desirée Rodríguez-Robles: Department of Forest and Agricultural Engineering, School of Agricultural Engineering, University of Extremadura, Av. Adolfo Suarez s/n, 06071 Badajoz, Spain
José R. Villar-García: Department of Forest and Agricultural Engineering, Universitary Center of Plasencia, University of Extremadura, Av. Virgen del Puerto 2, 10600 Plasencia, Spain
Rafael Agujetas: Department of Mechanical, Energy and Materials Engineering, School of Industrial Engineering, University of Extremadura, Avda. de Elvas s/n, 06006 Badajoz, Spain

Agriculture, 2020, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-31

Abstract: Greenhouses had to be designed to sustain permanent maintenance and crop loads as well as the site-specific climatic conditions, with wind being the most damaging. However, both the structure and foundation are regularly empirically calculated, which could lead to structural inadequacies or cost ineffectiveness. Thus, in this paper, the structural assessment of a multi-tunnel greenhouse was carried out. Firstly, wind loads were assessed through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Then, the buckling failure mode when either the European Standard (EN) or the CFD wind loads were contemplated was assessed by a finite element method (FEM). Conversely to the EN 13031-1, CFD wind loads generated a suction in the 0–55° region of the first tunnel and a 60% reduction of the external pressure coefficients in the third tunnel was not detected. Moreover, the first-order buckling eigenvalues were reduced (32–57%), which resulted in the need for a different calculation method (i.e., elastoplastic analysis), and global buckling modes similar to local buckling shape were detected. Finally, the foundation was studied by the FEM and a matrix method based on the Wrinkler model. The stresses and deformations arising from the proposed matrix method were conservative compared to those obtained by the FEM.

Keywords: wind; computational fluid dynamics; buckling; finite element method; matrix model; structure and foundation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/11/499/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/10/11/499/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:10:y:2020:i:11:p:499-:d:434476

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().