Computational Fluid Dynamic Modeling Application as a Design Tool in Air Assisted Pesticide Sprayer Development

Abstract

The complex dynamic behaviors of air assisted pesticides spraying, especially inter-droplets interactions as well as effects of prevailing surrounding fluid environment before and after the spray breakup makes development of an ideal sprayer unattainable. Moreover, plants’ canopy architectures are sophisticated mainly due to variations in features’ orientation amongst species. A prior insight of the sprayer’s performance behavior at design phase can significantly help in avoiding unanticipated future failures. This situation has recently, inevitably paved way for the application of numerical analysis such as Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modeling as a robust design tool. Furthermore, movement of spray droplets from the generator to the targets involve fluid flows, heat transfer and mass flow which are the principle fields in CFD simulation of transport phenomena. As the droplets travel, the surrounding environment is likely to interfere with their physical and chemical properties. The concern to fully utilize the technology has nowadays not only drawn the attention of manufacturing industry but has also captured the interests of researchers. Previous applications of CFD modeling have demonstrated its potential to ease the challenges of cost and time consumption that would have been encountered in physical experimental trials tests. Nevertheless, developing a standard ideal model still remains unattainable. Most researchers have developed simple model mainly of Lagrangian approach whose applications have primarily been on open-fields spraying despite the situation still remaining far underway. This paper gives a state-of-art review of the application of CFD modeling in air atomized pesticide spraying with an aim of highlighting future research needs.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamic, Air assisted sprayers, Lagrangian approach, Spray droplets