TY - JOUR
T1 - New inflow boundary conditions for modeling twisted wind profiles in CFD simulation for evaluating the pedestrian-level wind field near an isolated building
AU - Weerasuriya, A. U.
AU - Hu, Z. Z.
AU - Zhang, X. L.
AU - Tse, K. T.
AU - Li, S.
AU - Chan, P. W.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/3/15
Y1 - 2018/3/15
N2 - The hilly topography of Hong Kong influences oncoming winds and gradually changes their wind directions along the profiles' height. The vertical variation in wind directions, or the twist effect, significantly influences the Pedestrian Level Wind (PLW) field in urban areas of Hong Kong, thus it is a topic demanding systematic investigations. In this study, a new set of inflow boundary conditions are proposed to model twisted wind flows in Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations. The new inflow boundary condition derived based on the horizontal homogeneous assumption, specifies a vertical profile of lateral wind speeds at the inlet boundary to sustain the twist effect in the empty computational domain. The proposed boundary conditions are used to simulate the PLW fields near three isolated buildings with different Height-to-Width ratio using two CFD codes; OpenFOAM, and FLUENT. The results reveal that OpenFOAM is more reliable in simulating PLW fields in twisted wind flows using the new set of boundary conditions. The three-dimensional flow field provided by the OpenFOAM simulation shows sparse streamlines downstream the buildings, indicating lack of organized eddies in the building far wake, which negatively affects the dispersion of air pollutants in twisted winds.
AB - The hilly topography of Hong Kong influences oncoming winds and gradually changes their wind directions along the profiles' height. The vertical variation in wind directions, or the twist effect, significantly influences the Pedestrian Level Wind (PLW) field in urban areas of Hong Kong, thus it is a topic demanding systematic investigations. In this study, a new set of inflow boundary conditions are proposed to model twisted wind flows in Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulations. The new inflow boundary condition derived based on the horizontal homogeneous assumption, specifies a vertical profile of lateral wind speeds at the inlet boundary to sustain the twist effect in the empty computational domain. The proposed boundary conditions are used to simulate the PLW fields near three isolated buildings with different Height-to-Width ratio using two CFD codes; OpenFOAM, and FLUENT. The results reveal that OpenFOAM is more reliable in simulating PLW fields in twisted wind flows using the new set of boundary conditions. The three-dimensional flow field provided by the OpenFOAM simulation shows sparse streamlines downstream the buildings, indicating lack of organized eddies in the building far wake, which negatively affects the dispersion of air pollutants in twisted winds.
KW - CFD
KW - Isolated building
KW - Pedestrian level wind environment
KW - Twisted wind profiles
KW - Wind tunnel test
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044482245&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.01.047
DO - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2018.01.047
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85044482245
SN - 0360-1323
VL - 132
SP - 303
EP - 318
JO - Building and Environment
JF - Building and Environment
ER -