Title: Evaluation of OpenFOAM against CODASC wind tunnel database and impact of heating on the flow in an idealised street canyon

Authors: Anton Petrov

Addresses: National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, Department of Meteorology, 66, Tsarigradsko shose blvd., Sofia, Bulgaria

Abstract: This paper focuses on examination of the CFD simulated impact of irregularly heated surface on the flow recirculation and pollutant distributions in a tree-free idealised street canyon. For that purpose, the buoyantBoussinesqPimpleFoam solver of the CFD model OpenFOAM was tested against the CODASC wind tunnel database (http://www.windforschung.de/CODASC.htm). The wind tunnel experiments were run only under neutral atmospheric stratification conditions, so in order to be examined the impact of the heating on the flow, OpenFOAM was set for two general cases. In the first one, the model was run with initial conditions which correspond to the physical conditions in the wind tunnel. The simulated data is then compared to that measured in the tunnel. For the second case, an additional boundary condition for the air temperature near the surface of the street canyon was set. An intercomparison of the modelled data from both cases is then made.

Keywords: street canyon; computational fluid dynamics; urban pollution; environmental pollution; OpenFOAM; dispersion modelling; heat impacted flow; model evaluation; wind tunnel; CODASC.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2019.101838

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2019 Vol.65 No.1/2/3, pp.149 - 163

Received: 20 Jan 2018
Accepted: 07 Jan 2019
Published online: 28 Aug 2019 *

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