CFD simulations of gas dispersion around high-rise building in non-isothermal boundary layer

Urban heat island phenomena and air pollution become serious problems in weak wind regions such as behind buildings and within street canyons, where buoyancy effect cannot be neglected. In order to apply CFD techniques for estimation of ventilation and thermal and pollutant dispersion in urban areas, it is important to assess the performance of turbulence models adopted to simulate these phenomena. As the first step of this study, we carried out wind tunnel experiments and CFD simulations of gas and thermal dispersion behind a high-rise building in an unstable non-isothermal turbulent flow. The standard k-ε model and a two-equation heat-transfer model as RANS models, and LES, were used for the CFD simulation. One of the important purposes of this study was to clarify the effect of inflow turbulence (both velocity and temperature) on flow field and gas/thermal dispersion for the LES calculation. Thus, LES calculations with/without inflow turbulence were conducted. The inflow turbulence was generated through a separate precursor simulation. The calculated results showed that both RANS models overestimated the size of the recirculation region behind the building and underestimated the lateral dispersion of the gas. Turbulent flow structures of LES with and without inflow turbulence were completely different. The LES result with inflow turbulence achieved better agreement with the experiment.     

Large-eddy simulation of turbulent transports in urban street canyons in different thermal stabilities

Five sets of large-eddy simulations (LES) were performed to examine the characteristics of flows and pollutant dispersion in two-dimensional (2D) urban street canyons of unity building-height-to-street-width ratio in neutral, unstable, and stable thermal stratifications. The characteristic flows fall into the skimming flow regime for all the cases tested. The mean wind speed is increased and decreased, respectively, in unstable and stable conditions. Turbulence is enhanced in unstable conditions. Whereas, in stable conditions, the low-level temperature inversion weakens the recirculating flows forming another layer of stagnant air in the vicinity of the ground level. Unexpectedly, an increase in turbulence is found in the street canyon core in the slightly stable condition (Richardson number Rb=0.18). The turbulence promotion could be caused by the unique geometry of 2D street canyon in which the stable stratification slows down the primary recirculation. The rather stagnant flows in turn sharpen the roof-level vertical velocity gradient and deter the entrainment penetrating down to the ground level, leading to a substantial pollutant accumulation. While the pollutant tends to be well mixed in the street canyons in neutral and unstable conditions, a mildly improved pollutant removal in unstable conditions is observed because of the enhanced roof-level buoyancy-driven turbulence.     

LES over RANS in building simulation for outdoor and indoor applications: A foregone conclusion?

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) undeniably has the potential to provide more accurate and more reliable results than simulations based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. However, LES entails a higher simulation complexity and a much higher computational cost. In spite of some claims made in the past decades that LES would render RANS obsolete, RANS remains widely used in both research and engineering practice. This paper attempts to answer the questions why this is the case and whether this is justified, from the viewpoint of building simulation, both for outdoor and indoor applications. First, the governing equations and a brief overview of the history of LES and RANS are presented. Next, relevant highlights from some previous position papers on LES versus RANS are provided. Given their importance, the availability or unavailability of best practice guidelines is outlined. Subsequently, why RANS is still frequently used and whether this is justified or not is illustrated by examples for five application areas in building simulation: pedestrian-level wind comfort, near-field pollutant dispersion, urban thermal environment, natural ventilation of buildings and indoor airflow. It is shown that the answers vary depending on the application area but also depending on other—less obvious—parameters such as the building configuration under study. Finally, a discussion and conclusions including perspectives on the future of LES and RANS in building simulation are provided.     

Measurements and numerical modeling of flow field and pollutant dispersion in areaway space

In residential building design, areaway can act as an open subsurface space to help improve the living environment in adjacent basement by natural ventilation. To study this particular ventilation phenomenon mainly driven by wind force, the first part of this paper presents an investigation of flow field and pollution dispersion inside areaway space based on a wind tunnel experiment. In the experiment, the measurement of mean velocity, turbulence and concentration as well as the flow visualization were carried out for a rectangular cavity-like areaway model with the width to height (w/h) ratio ranging from 0.3 to 1.0 and the influence of above-ground building has also been investigated. The experimental results reveal quite different airflow patterns characterized with unsteady vortex movement inside the areaway model, which indicates that the w/h ratio and the above-ground building are important factors for ventilating the areaway space. Furthermore, for the purpose of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model validation, the experimental results of flow fields were compared with the simulation results. The areaway model of w/h = 1 was used for this study and the simulations were performed using large-eddy simulation (LES) and standard k-ε turbulence model. The numerical results show a good agreement with the experimental results when using LES with inflow turbulence. The further investigations with regard to the characteristics of flow field and pollutant removal as well as ventilation performance were also performed by LES.     

LES and RANS comparison of flow and pollutant dispersion in urban environment

This study investigates air pollution dispersion in urban areas by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The commercial CFD software FLUENT was used to implement two different turbulence simulation methods (RANS and LES), in domains similar to complex urban environments. Particularly, different combinations of roof shapes were studied and simulation results of pollutant (ethane) concentrations were compared against experimental data. The building height (H) to the neighbour building distance (B) ratio was also taken into consideration. Previous studies showed that both RANS and LES models are accurate enough to predict pollutant concentrations fields in B/H = 1. In the present study the incapability of RANS models to predict accurately pollutant concentration in B/H = 0.5 for all roof shapes configurations is revealed.     

On the numerical study of contaminant particle concentration in indoor airflow

The application of three turbulence models—standard k–ε, re-normalization group (RNG) k–ε and RNG-based large eddy simulation (LES) model—to simulate indoor contaminant particle dispersion and concentration distribution in a model room has been investigated. The measured air phase velocity data obtained by Posner et al. [Energy and Buildings 2003;35:515–26], are used to validate the simulation results. All the three turbulence model predictions have shown to be in good agreement with the experimental data. The RNG-based LES model has shown to yield the best agreement. The flow of contaminant particles (with diameters of 1 and 10 μm) is simulated within the indoor airflow environment of the model room. Comparing the three turbulence models for particle flow predictions, the RNG-based LES model through better accommodating unsteady low-Reynolds-number (LRN) turbulent flow structure has shown to provide more realistic particle dispersion and concentration distribution than the other two conventional turbulence models. As the experimental approach to access indoor contaminant particle concentration can be rather expensive and unable to provide the required detailed information, the LES prediction can be effectively employed to validate the widely used k–ε models that are commonly applied in many building simulation investigations.     

Impact of wedge-shaped roofs on airflow and pollutant dispersion inside urban street canyons

The objective of this study is to investigate numerically the effect of wedge-shaped roofs on wind flow and pollutant dispersion in a street canyon within an urban environment. A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for evaluating airflow and pollutant dispersion within an urban street canyon is firstly developed using the FLUENT code, and then validated against the wind tunnel experiment. It was found that the model performance is satisfactory. Having established this, the wind flow and pollutant dispersion in urban street canyons of sixteen different wedge-shaped roof combinations are simulated. The computed velocity fields and concentration contours indicate that the in-canyon vortex dynamics and pollutant distriburtion are strongly dependent on the wedge-shaped roof configurations: (1) the height of a wedge-shaped roof peak is a crucial parameter determining the in-canyon vortex structure when an upward wedge-shaped roof is placed on the upwind building of a canyon; (2) both the heights of upstream and downstream corners of the upwind building have a significant impact on the in-canyon vortical flow when a downward wedge-shaped roof is placed on the upwind building of a canyon, due to flow separation as wind passes through the roof peak; (3) the height of upstream corner of the downwind building is an important factor deciding the in-canyon flow pattern when a wedge-shaped roof is placed on the downwind building of a canyon; (4) the characteristics of pollutant dispersion vary for different wedge-shaped roof configurations, and pollution levels are much higher in the “step-down” canyons relative to the “even” and “step-up” ones.     

Inflow turbulence generation techniques for large eddy simulation of flow and dispersion around a model building in a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer

The present paper investigates the performance of various inflow turbulence generation techniques (ITGT) for large eddy simulation (LES) of flow and dispersion around a model building in a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer. Four different ITGT comprising 1 – no fluctuations, 2 – spectral method, 3 – vortex method and 4 – internal mapping, based on two basic methodologies (i.e. precursor and synthetic turbulence methods), are employed. These techniques are evaluated by considering their prediction accuracy, computational costs, complexity of implementation, inflow information required to operate and impacts on the flow downstream of the inlet, particularly in the wake region of the model building. Results indicate that the accuracy of LES predictions is greatly reliant on ITGT. It is shown that ITGT not only have significant effects on flow field vortical structures, but also influence frequency contents of velocity fluctuations, recirculation regions and plume shapes in the wake region.     

Large eddy simulation of wind‐induced interunit dispersion around multistory buildings

Previous studies regarding interunit dispersion used Reynolds‐averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) models and thus obtained only mean dispersion routes and re‐entry ratios. Given that the envelope flow around a building is highly fluctuating, mean values could be insufficient to describe interunit dispersion. This study investigates the wind‐induced interunit dispersion around multistory buildings using the large eddy simulation (LES) method. This is the first time interunit dispersion has been investigated transiently using a LES model. The quality of the selected LES model is seriously assured through both experimental validation and sensitivity analyses. Two aspects are paid special attention: (i) comparison of dispersion routes with those provided by previous RANS simulations and (ii) comparison of timescales with those of natural ventilation and the survival times of pathogens. The LES results reveal larger dispersion scopes than the RANS results. Such larger scopes could be caused by the fluctuating and stochastic nature of envelope flows, which, however, is canceled out by the inherent Reynolds‐averaged treatment of RANS models. The timescales of interunit dispersion are comparable with those of natural ventilation. They are much shorter than the survival time of most pathogens under ordinary physical environments, indicating that interunit dispersion is a valid route for disease transmission.     

Large eddy simulations for studying tunnel smoke ventilation

Computational fluid dynamics are applied to simulate the smoke movement in a ventilated tunnel fire through large eddy simulation (LES). Several scenarios with different ventilation rates are considered by taking the fire as a volumetric heat source. Results predicted by LES are compared with those from a k– model. These include temperature fields, flame shape and the smoke movement pattern. It is found that thermal stratification and smoke backflow can be predicted successfully by LES. The possibility of applying LES as an engineering tool to smoke management system design in tunnels is discussed.     

Using large eddy simulation to study particle motions in a room

As people spend most of their time in an indoor environment, it is important to predict indoor pollutant level in order to assess health risks. As particles are an important pollutant indoors, it is of great interest to study the airflow pattern and particle dispersion in buildings. This study uses large eddy simulation (LES) to predict three-dimensional and transient turbulent flows and a Lagrangian model to compute particle trajectories in a room. The motion of three different types of solid particles in a decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulent airflow is calculated. By comparing the computed results with the experimental data from the literature, the computational method used in this investigation is found to be successful in predicting the airflow and particle trajectories in terms of the second-order statistics, such as the mean-square displacement and turbulent intensity. This Lagrangian model is then applied to the study of particles' dispersion in a ventilated cavity with a simplified geometry for two ventilation scenarios. It is shown that light particles follow the airflow in the room and many particles are exhausted, while heavier particles deposit to the floor or/and are exhausted. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The results of this paper can be used to study dispersion of infectious diseases in enclosed spaces in which virus or bacteria are often attached to particles and transported to different rooms in a building through ventilation systems. In most of studies, the virus or bacteria have been considered to be gaseous phase so there is no slip between virus/bacteria and air. The results in this paper show that heavier particles are submitted to gravity and are sensitive to the ventilation strategy.     

Large eddy simulation of compartment fire with solid combustibles

For properly describing practical building fire processes with solid combustibles, the pyrolysis kinetics model of solid combustibles and the large eddy simulation (LES) approach are applied to the simulation of the thermal decomposition of the polyurethane foam (PUF) slab and the space fire spread in a compartment. The instantaneous variations of the heat release rate of the PUF slab, the smoke temperature, and the smoke interface height with time are obtained under different ventilation conditions. They are in agreement with the measured data. The ventilation conditions have distinct effects on the interactions between the pyrolysis of the PUF slab and the space fire spread. Influenced by the space fire spread, the heat flux on the top plane of the PUF slab exhibits a non-uniform distribution. The PUF slab is consumed in an asymmetric manner.     

Numerical simulation of dispersion around an isolated cubic building: Model evaluation of RANS and LES

Several studies have been carried out on CFD prediction based on a RANS (Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes equations) model for dispersion around buildings, but it was reported that a RANS computation often provides extremely high concentration, which are not observed in usual measurements. These results suggest that transient simulations such as the large-eddy simulation (LES) might be required to achieve more accurate results. Nevertheless, very few studies have evaluated the basic performance of LES in modeling the dispersion field for a simple configuration in comparison with the RANS model. Therefore, relative performance of these simulation methods for dispersion problem around buildings should be clarified in order to make it possible to choose a suitable numerical method for its purpose. The purpose of this study is to confirm the accuracy of LES in modeling plume dispersion near and around a simple building model and to clarify the mechanism for the discrepancy in relation to the RANS computation. Simple LES modeling gives better results than RNG modeling of the distribution of concentration, although the difference for mean velocity is not so large. The horizontal diffusion of concentration is well reproduced by LES. This tendency is closely related to the reproduction of unsteady periodic fluctuation around cubical forms in LES.     

Experimental and CFD evidence of multiple solutions in a naturally ventilated building

This paper considers the existence of multiple solutions to natural ventilation of a simple one-zone building, driven by combined thermal and opposing wind forces. The present analysis is an extension of an earlier analytical study of natural ventilation in a fully mixed building, and includes the effect of thermal stratification. Both computational and experimental investigations were carried out in parallel with an analytical investigation. When flow is dominated by thermal buoyancy, it was found experimentally that there is thermal stratification. When the flow is wind-dominated, the room is fully mixed. Results from all three methods have shown that the hysteresis phenomena exist. Under certain conditions, two different stable steady-state solutions are found to exist by all three methods for the same set of parameters. As shown by both the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental results, one of the solutions can shift to another when there is a sufficient perturbation. These results have probably provided the strongest evidence so far for the conclusion that multiple states exist in natural ventilation of simple buildings. Different initial conditions in the CFD simulations led to different solutions, suggesting that caution must be taken when adopting the commonly used 'zero initialization'.     

Thermal conditions and ventilation in an ideal city model of Hong Kong

Urban heat island can significantly increase the demand for cooling of buildings in cities. This paper investigates one of the main causes of the urban heat island phenomenon, i.e. reduced city ventilation. Two simple Hong Kong city models with relatively complex terrain were considered here under different atmospheric conditions. A 3D RNG k-? turbulence model was used for modeling turbulence effects. The simulation results showed that the influence of thermal stratification can be significant on city ventilation driven partially by thermal buoyancy. When the wind speed is relatively large, the impact of thermal stratification on air flow in city street canyons is minor. When the wind speed is small relative to the buoyancy force, the airflow in the street canyons is dependent on thermal stratification. When there is an adverse vertical temperature gradient, the greater the instability, the stronger the vertical mixing and the greater the flow rate caused by turbulence. The heat and pollutants can easily accumulate under stable atmospheric conditions when there is only a weak background wind or none at all.     

Responding to sudden pollutant releases in office buildings: 1. Framework and analysis tools

We describe a framework for developing response recommendations to unexpected toxic pollutant releases in commercial buildings. It may be applied in conditions where limited building- and event-specific information is available. The framework is based on a screening-level methodology to develop insights, or rules-of-thumb, into the behavior of airflow and pollutant transport. A three-stage framework is presented: (1). develop a building taxonomy to identify generic, or prototypical, building configurations; (2). characterize uncertainty and conduct simulation modeling to predict typical airflow and pollutant transport behavior; and (3). rank uncertainty contributions to determine how information obtained at a site might reduce uncertainties in the model predictions. The approach is applied to study a hypothetical pollutant release on the first floor of a five-story office building. Key features that affect pollutant transport are identified and described by value ranges in the building stock. Simulation modeling provides predictions and uncertainty estimates of time-dependent pollutant concentrations, following a release, for a range of indoor and outdoor conditions. In this exercise, we predict concentrations on the fifth floor to be an order of magnitude less than on the first, coefficients of variation greater than 2, and information about the HVAC operation and window position most reducing uncertainty in predicted peak concentrations.     

Large-eddy simulation of wind effects on a super-tall building in urban environment conditions

A combined study of large-eddy simulation (LES), wind tunnel testing and full-scale measurement is conducted for the evaluation of wind effects on a super-tall building in a complex urban area. To validate the numerical simulations, the wind tunnel experiments including synchronous multi-pressure and high-frequency force balance model tests are conducted in a boundary layer wind tunnel laboratory. The numerical predictions are then compared with the experimental results, demonstrating that the LES can provide comparable predictions of the wind effects on the super-tall building. Furthermore, the cross-validation of the predicted displacement responses by the LES against the wind tunnel and full-scale measurements are presented and the agreement among them is reasonably good. The main objective of this study is to explore an effective numerical approach for the accurate estimation of wind effects on tall buildings in urban environment conditions and promote the practical use of the LES in the wind-resistant design of complex structures.     

Neutral and non-neutral atmosphere: Probabilistic characterization and wind-induced response of structures

Atmospheric conditions vary on the basis of the local thermal stratification, giving rise to stable, unstable or neutral atmospheric conditions, that can modify the incoming wind field and the consequent structural loads and response. This paper studies the problem from two points of view. Starting from a large database of in situ measurements of thermal stratification parameters, the first part of the paper proposes an analytical model for the statistical distribution of atmospheric conditions on varying the mean wind velocity. This model is then adopted, in the second part of the paper, to analyze the vortex-shedding response of chimneys, highlighting the great variability of the maximum response under thermal atmospheric conditions with the same probability of occurrence.     

On a numerical study of atmospheric 2D and 3D—flows over a complex topography with forest including pollution dispersion

The paper presents a mathematical and numerical investigation of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) flow over a complex terrain. Two mathematical models described in details are based upon: (1) full RANS equations written in the conservative form and (2) modification of the RANS equations by Boussinesq approximation re-casted in the non-conservative form. Both models are formulated for an incompressible flow under the indifferent atmospheric stratification together with a simple algebraic turbulence model and a stationary boundary conditions. A pollution dispersion of passive pollutant has been considered as well. Both models have been applied to a real case atmospheric problem: an investigation of the influence of a forest stand on the flow over a complex topography given by a surface coal field located in the North Bohemia. A non-homogeneous forest stand is simulated by a special model based on a source term added to the momentum equations. A forest free area is supposed to be covered by a low vegetation and its influence is simulated by a surface roughness parameter.     

Comparison of various revised k–ε models and LES applied to flow around a high-rise building model with 1:1:2 shape placed within the surface boundary layer

This paper compares computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results using various revised k–ε models and large eddy simulation (LES) applied to flow around a high-rise building model with 1:1:2 shape placed within the surface boundary layer. The first part of the paper examines the accuracy of various revised k–ε models, i.e. LK model, MMK model and Durbin's revised k–ε model, by comparing their results with experimental data. Among the computations using various revised k–ε models compared here, Durbin's revised k–ε model shows the best agreement with the experiment. The reason for the good performance of Durbin's model is discussed on the basis of ‘Realizability’ of predicted results. The second part of the paper describes the computations based on LES with and without inflow turbulence applied to the same flowfield. The results are compared with those of the experiments and Durbin's k–ε model in order to clarify the effect of velocity fluctuations on prediction accuracy of time-averaged velocity fields around the building. Special attention is paid to prediction accuracy for reproducing flow behind a building. The LES results with inflow turbulence show generally good agreement with experimental results in terms of the distributions of velocity and turbulence energy in this region. This improvement is mainly due to the fact that the periodic velocity fluctuation behind the building is well reproduced in LES.