Wind tunnel simulation studies on dispersion at urban street canyons and intersections—a review

Increased traffic emissions and reduced natural ventilation cause build up of high pollution levels in urban street canyons/intersections. Natural ventilation in urban streets canyons/intersections is restricted because the bulk of flow does not enter inside and pollutants are trapped in the lower region. Wind vortices, low-pressure zones and channeling effects may cause build up of pollutants under adverse meteorological conditions within urban street canyons. The review provides a comprehensive literature on wind tunnel simulation studies in urban street canyons/intersections including the effects of building configurations, canyon geometries, traffic induced turbulence and variable approaching wind directions on flow fields and exhaust dispersion.     

街道峡谷内汽车污染物扩散的模拟研究

对街道峡谷污染问题的研究常采用实地测量、物理风洞试验和数值模拟等方法。本文采用数值模拟对城市街道峡谷汽车污染物的扩散规律进行了研究,从描述街道峡谷内空气流动和污染物扩散的控制方程出发,采用数值模拟的方法对街道内部的空气流动和污染物的扩散进行了模拟分析,并将结果与风洞试验结果进行比较,从而获得了城市街道峡谷汽车污染物的扩散规律。研究结果可以为城市街道大气污染监测、评价以及防治提供科学依据。     

街谷交通空气污染对IAQ影响的研究进展

随着城市交通的快速发展,交通污染逐渐成为影响城市空气质量的主要因素。街谷内的交通污染还会因为室内通风对室内空气质量产生影响。本文介绍了城市街谷内交通空气污染的主要特点和扩散模式,总结了室外交通污染对室内空气质量的影响特点和影响因素,并对现有的实地测量法、理论模式预测法和数值模拟法进行了分析和比较,最终对数值模拟法可能遇到的问题和解决方法进行了分析和讨论。     

街道峡谷内污染物扩散对周边建筑物自然通风影响的研究进展

介绍了城市街道峡谷内污染物的特点和扩散模式,分析了换气效率、室内气流组织、污染物扩散方式等影响建筑自然通风的主要因素,并对实地测量法和数值模拟法进行了分析和比较。     

An experimental investigation of the wind environment and air quality within a densely populated urban street canyon

This paper presents an experimental investigation of wind flow characteristics and air quality along a street canyon located within a dense urban area. Four typical models of a highly populated urban area are studied and wind tunnel experiments are carried out over an extended range of the applied wind directions. The building patterns are represented by 1:100 scale models, where wind velocity and tracer gas concentrations are measured along the two sides of the street. The study results provide evidence that building configurations and wind directions are very important factors in determining both wind flow and pollutant dispersion characteristics within urban domains. Also, the results demonstrate that gaps between buildings are a very important factor to be considered by urban planners and designers, because, for a given building height, larger gaps induce more wind in urban canyons, thus improving the ventilation process.     

The effect of street dimensions and traffic density on the noise level and natural ventilation potential in urban canyons

High external noise levels are often used to justify the use of air conditioning in commercial and residential buildings. Methods of estimating noise levels in urban canyons are necessary if the potential for naturally ventilating buildings is to be assessed. A series of noise measurements were made in ‘canyon’ streets in Athens with aspect ratio (height/width) varying from 1.0 to 5.0. The main purpose of the measurements was to examine the vertical variation in noise in the canyons in order to give advice on natural ventilation potential. A simple model of the noise level has been developed using a linear regression analysis of the measured data. The model can be used to predict the fall-off (attenuation) of the noise level with height above street level. The attenuation is found to be a function of street width and height above the street, but the maximum level of attenuation (at the top of the canyon) is almost entirely a function of the aspect ratio except in narrow streets. Background noise (L₉₀) suffers less attenuation with height than foreground noise (L₁₀). Measurements of acoustic comfort in a survey throughout Europe are used to estimate the potential for natural ventilation in canyon streets.     

Numerical simulation of the thermal environment of urban street canyon and a design strategy

The thermal environment of urban street canyons is closely related to design factors. By establishing a dynamic model of street canyons numerical simulations of temperature fields for typical street canyons are conducted. Through numerical analysis the influence of the most common variables related to environment in China’s urban residential quarters is compared and contrasted. Environmental factors include the height-width ratio of the street canyon, ground paving materials, canyon directions, and facades of buildings on canyon sides. Simulation results reveal how these factors influence the street canyon thermal environment. Results also give the recommended optimal height-width ratios for urban street canyons and question and revise some design ideas prevalent in China today.     

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.     

On the cooling potential of night ventilation techniques in the urban environment

The present paper aims to examine the application of night ventilation techniques to 10 urban canyons, situated in the extended region of Athens, Greece. As the climatic conditions in the urban environment frequently present important variation in different locations of the same urban area, the outdoor air temperature and the wind profile have been measured inside and outside the experimental canyons. The present work determines the impact of the urban environment on night ventilation energy performance, by studying a typical room located in the urban domain, under air-conditioned and free-floating operation, when single-sided and cross-ventilation are considered, during the night period. The influence of the urban microclimate on the efficiency of the technique has been examined by considering the typical zone inside the canyons and under undistributed conditions. The comparison of the results permits to evaluate the impact of the urban environment on the effectiveness of night ventilation techniques. The performed analysis shows that due to the increase in air temperature and the decrease in wind velocity inside the canyons, the efficiency of the studied techniques is significantly reduced compared with the situation that considers the undistributed conditions, dominating outside the urban canyons.     

Experimental performance investigation of natural,mechanical and hybrid ventilation in urban environment

An experimental investigation of the performance of natural, mechanical and hybrid ventilation systems was carried out in an urban measurement campaign during summer period 2002 in Athens, Greece. Three building apartments characterized by different geometry and located in two street canyons with different orientation were studied. The aim was to show the impact of the urban environment on the ventilation efficiency of natural and hybrid systems. The tracer gas decay method has been applied during the experimental procedures with one (N₂O) and two tracer gases (N₂O and SF₆). Based on the results of air-exchange rates using multizone methods from a previous study, a further analysis is performed in the present work for the evaluation of the performance of different ventilation systems in urban conditions, with emphasis on the ventilation efficiency. A methodology to estimate the air-exchange efficiency, on the basis of room mean age of air, in multitracer gas experiments is introduced. In spite of the reduced wind speeds due to the canyon effect, appreciable ventilation rates can be obtained with natural ventilation, especially when cross-ventilation with two or more windows is measured. For single-sided ventilation or under calm conditions, hybrid ventilation has only a slight advantage over natural, either in terms of air-exchange rates or of air-exchange efficiencies.     

Pollution removal effectiveness of the pedestrian ventilation system

Dispersion of vehicular pollution through street canyons has been widely studied in order to find strategies for reducing concentration level. Recently, a pedestrian ventilation system (PVS), an active mitigation strategy, has been proposed to enhance pedestrian comfort indices and to induce appropriate air movement. This paper investigates the performance of PVS to control pollution dispersion within street canyons. Pollution control is achieved by exhausting/supplying air from/to the street canyon through the PVS. In the present paper, the effectiveness of these strategies was studied by varying the parameters that affect dispersion, such as aspect ratios (AR) and thermal stratifications.Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been selected as the investigation tool. Prior to simulations, the proposed model was successfully validated using two sets of experimental data. Four case-studies were also used to investigate the aspect ratio and the stratification effect. These test cases were developed based on small scale studies in a wind tunnel. Results show the ability of the PVS to change the airflow pattern through the street canyon, resulting in significant pollution removal, especially from the pedestrian level. Moreover, the air and pollution exchange rate concepts have been used for better evaluation of the PVS performance. Furthermore, a breakthrough index was proposed to evaluate the effect of the PVS airflow rate.     

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.     

Effect of uneven building layout on air flow and pollutant dispersion in non-uniform street canyons

Uneven building layouts and non-uniform street canyons are common in actual urban morphology. To study the effects of building layouts on air flow in non-uniform street canyons, various building arrangements are designed in this study. Simulations are carried out under four cases (i.e., a uniform street canyon as Case 1 and three non-uniform canyons as Cases 2–4) with parameter change of the occupying ratio of high buildings (ORHB) in the computational domain and their bilateral allocation as well as the combinations of stepup and/or stepdown notches. In the three non-uniform canyons, stepup and stepdown notches are separating (with ORHB of 25% for Case 2 and 75% for Case 4) or adjoining (with ORHB of 50% for Case 3). The air flow and pollutant dispersion in these street canyons are investigated using Large-eddy Simulation (LES). The air flow structures in the non-uniform street canyons are more complicated than in the uniform street canyon. Inside the non-uniform street canyons, the tilting, horizontal divergence and convergence of wind streamlines are found. Large-scale air exchanges of air mass inside and above the street canyons are found as well. At the pedestrian level, the concentrations of simulated pollutants (e.g., the mean and maximum concentrations) in the non-uniform street canyons are lower than those in the uniform one, suggesting that uneven building layouts are capable of improving the dispersion of pollutants in urban area. Further studies on Case 2–4 show that the separation of stepup and stepdown notches along the street increases the wind velocities in the vicinity of high buildings, while the adjoining of stepup and stepdown notches decreases the wind velocities. Low concentrations of pollutant at the pedestrian level are found in Case 2 compared to Cases 3 and 4. Thus, the separation of stepup and stepdown notches in non-uniform street canyons might be a good choice for uneven building layout arrangements from the point of view of pollutant dispersion and human health.     

Building mounted wind turbines and their suitability for the urban scale—A review of methods of estimating urban wind resource

In this paper, a review is presented of academic literature regarding urban wind speeds for building mounted wind turbines. Site measurement of wind speed requires time and money that often are not available for small micro-generation projects. Research into wind speed estimation for the urban environment has shown that street canyons affect urban wind flow, that wind speed up over the roof ridge is only evident for isolated single buildings, that the wind resource “seen” by a building mounted wind turbine is affected by positioning (height above roof ridge and position relative to the prevailing wind direction), that urban terrain roughness is high, and that adjacent buildings can cause wind shadow. This multiplicity of factors makes it difficult to generalise a wind resource estimation methodology for the urban environment. Scaling factors may prove to be a practical solution, provided the accuracy of their use is well understood.     

Impact of non-uniform urban surface temperature on pollution dispersion in urban areas

Airflow pattern through street canyons has been widely studied to understand the nature of pollution dispersion in order to develop guidelines for urban planners. One of the major contributing parameters in pollution dispersion is thermal-induced flow caused by surface and air temperature difference. However, most of the previous studies assumed isothermal condition for street canyons. Those addressed the thermal-induced flow, have assumed a uniform wall surface temperature distribution. The external building wall surface temperature distribution is not uniform, and is influenced by many factors including the wall surface characteristics, and shading. The non-uniform temperature distribution significantly impacts on 3-dimensional airflow within street canyons. Moreover, effect of intersection is barely considered in the literature where L/H<3 (L and H are respectively length and height of street canyon). This Paper reports the development of a 3-dimensional model to study the effect of non-uniform wall surface temperature distribution on the pollution dispersion and flow pattern within the short street canyons (L/H<3). For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to investigate these effects on pollution dispersion in various prevailing wind velocities and directions. Moreover, active and passive techniques to reduce the level of concentration are examined. The study clearly shows that thermal-induced flow dominates during fair-weather condition.     

A numerical study of reactive pollutant dispersion in street canyons with green roofs

Roof greening is a new technique for improvement of outdoor thermal environment which influences air quality through its impacts on thermal and flow field. In order to examine effects of green roofs on reactive pollutant dispersion within urban street canyons, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was employed which contained NO-NO₂-O₃ photochemistry and energy balance models. Simulations were performed for street canyons with different aspect ratios (H/W) of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 such that leaf area density (LAD) of green roofs changed. It was found that roof greening led distribution of pollutants to alter for H/W = 0.5 and 1.0 cases in such a manner that their averaged concentrations had small variations as LAD changed. However, by increasing LAD in H/W = 2.0, ventilation efficiency of nitrogen oxides increased since the flow was enhanced within the canyon. Additionally, averaged concentration of ozone in H/W = 2.0 increased with increasing LAD, owing to downward flux of ozone at roof level. Results show that roof greening is a good strategy which can be used in order to improve air quality and thermal environment, especially within deep street canyons.     

Evaluation of the ventilation potential of courtyards and urban street canyons using RANS and LES

We introduce the ventilation potential (VP) as a statistical, climate-dependent measure to assess the removal of scalars, such as heat and pollutants, from courtyards or urban street canyons. The VP is obtained following a three-step approach. First, the magnitude of the flux through a horizontal surface situated at the top of the courtyard or canyon is determined by means of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for various courtyard geometries and ambient wind directions. Then, this exchange flux is normalized with the free-stream wind speed and subsequently parameterized as a function of the courtyard’s length-to-width ratio and the incidence angle of the wind flow. Finally, the combination of the parameterization with site-specific wind data yields the VP. This study reveals that the normalized exchange flux is maximal when the angle between the prevailing flow direction and the main courtyard axis is about 15-30°, regardless of the courtyard length. The normalized exchange flux increases with increasing courtyard length, and approaches the optimum for courtyards with a length-to-height ratio of ten. Longer courtyards behave as urban street canyons. Unsteady (LES) simulations lead to a much higher VP and thus favor scalar removal when compared with steady (RANS) simulations. These observations can have a decisive impact on urban planning, human comfort and health.     

Some characteristics of the wind flow in the lower Urban Boundary Layer

The characteristics of the wind flow at low levels in the urban environment (Roughness Sublayer (RS)) are quite different from, and to some extent independent of the characteristics of the flow in the upper part of the Urban Boundary Layer. In the RS, in fact, the flow is influenced more by the local geometry, than by a homogeneous energy transfer between horizontal layers. In this paper, the results of wind tunnel flow measurements in and above a regular urban geometry pattern, with street canyons parallel and orthogonal to the oncoming wind, are reported. The statistics and the spectral characteristics of the flow in the RS are discussed. The influence of the oncoming turbulence on the RS flow is analysed, and the differences between the flow in transversal and longitudinal street canyons are evidenced.     

Simulation study of the influence of different urban canyons element on the canyon thermal environment

The heat island effect is an important issue for large cities, especially those located in hot and moist climates. The phenomenon is more severe in urban canyons because surrounding high-rise buildings allow little ventilation and dissipation of heat caused by traffic. The primary goal of the present study is to investigate the thermal environment of a major street in Osaka by intensive measurement during the summer of 2006. Osaka is the second largest city in Japan and suffers from the most severe heat island effect. In addition, several fundamental renovations and a composite renovation for the improvement of thermal environment in the urban canyon are proposed, and the efficacies of these measures are verified by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. It was found that by modifying the heights of buildings along the street and the ground surface materials and increasing the quantity of vegetation, the thermal environment can be improved by a 2.0°C. reduction in standard new effective temperature (SET^*) at maximum.     

Comparative monitoring of natural,hybrid and mechanical ventilation systems in urban canyons

A number of field and indoor experimental procedures were performed in three typical apartment buildings located in two street canyons characterized by different urban features, during summer period 2002 in Athens. Natural, mechanical and hybrid ventilation measurements were performed based on the tracer gas method on a circular basis within the 24-h period. The indoor exchange rates are estimated using both single and multi-zone approaches based on the mass balance of two tracer gases (N₂O and SF₆). The experiments pointed out that, in spite of the canyon effect, appreciable ventilation rates can be obtained with natural ventilation, especially when cross ventilation with two or more windows is measured. In the presence of cross ventilation and with sufficient ambient wind speeds, natural ventilation is shown to be more effective, with regard to ACH, in comparison with hybrid. However, when only single-sided ventilation is possible or under calm conditions hybrid ventilation has a slight advantage over natural. A comparative analysis is made for the total air change rates estimated with the single and multi-zone methodologies. The multi-zone approach, in spite of its better theoretical basis, has been found more sensitive to the accuracy of the measured concentrations, especially when a single tracer is used.