LED lamp for poultry housing - Design and thermal management

The article describes the design, construction and the implemented thermal management of a LED lamp for use in lighting of poultry housing. The required operational regimes and properties of such lamps are different than those suited for human use. Thus the spectral and power characteristics of the lamp are chosen appropriately so as to accommodate for the differences in vision of poultry. A particular combination of LEDs is selected in order to achieve a close match between the spectral distribution of the lamp and the eye sensitivity of different types of domestic fowl. The thermal properties of the lamp are precisely tuned as it needs to work for different period of times ranging from 4hours to almost 23 hours per day. The ambient temperatures in poultry housing varies depending on several factors, like flock age, which leads to the detailed analysis of the thermal properties of the lamp for ambient temperatures between 20°C to 45°C and the current values through the LEDs. Infrared thermography is employed to measure the temperature distribution on the LEDs, circuit board and the heat sink.