Materials and Methods
Data Collection
A university technician (one in New York, one in Ohio) visited both barns within a region roughly one day every other week, in the morning and again that afternoon, to take measurements and collect data. Air temperatures, relative humidities, and black-globe temperatures were automatically measured and recorded every 10 minutes. This data was downloaded from each datalogger during visits.
Air velocities were measured manually using a hot-wire anemometer at 18 locations inside each barn and at one location well outside of each barn during each visit. The interior measurements were taken across the width of each barn at two locations that corresponded with the cross sections that contained two temperature & humidity sensors (Figure 1). Three measurement locations within each quadrant were near cow level (approximately 4 ft. off the floor of cow alley) and one was considerably higher (about 8 ft.). Additionally, airspeeds were measured in the drive-through alley at each cross section.
Horizontal airspeeds were averaged over roughly 1-minute durations for both north-south and east-west directions at each measurement location. Resultant airspeeds were later calculated as the vector sum of directional velocities.