Title: Modelling the air flow in symmetric and asymmetric street canyons

Authors: Jose Luis Santiago, Fernando Martin

Addresses: Environment Department, Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT), Av. Complutense, 22, 28040 Madrid, Spain. ' Environment Department, Research Centre for Energy, Environment and Technology (CIEMAT), Av. Complutense, 22, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to describe flow features in sequences of two-dimensional street canyons. Several configurations of symmetric and asymmetric canyons are studied by CFD modelling. Streets with different aspect ratios (W/H), where W is the width of street and H is the building height, are investigated. In asymmetric situations, one building (in the central canyon) is taller (30 m) than the others (20 m). The presence of the taller building seems to have a large influence on the wind flow inside the central street canyon and in ones located downstream. These results show that simulations are Reynolds-independent.

Keywords: street canyons; pollutant dispersion; dispersion modelling; air pollution; air quality; CFD modelling; symmetric buildings; asymmetric buildings; 2D; high Reynolds number simulations; Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations; RANS; turbulence modelling; computational fluid dynamics; air flow; wind flow.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2005.007662

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2005 Vol.25 No.1/2/3/4, pp.145 - 154

Published online: 31 Aug 2005 *

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