NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF URBAN VENTILATION

WITH DIFFERENT BUILDING SCALES

Shuojun Met, Jingjing Chang, Jiangtao Hu, Jihao Zhang, Lirong Tian, Fuyun Zhao
School ofPower and Mechanical Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
*569870646@qq.com

Keywords: Urban Ventilation,CFO Simulation,Urban 1988 [1]). The major inaccuracies of the model are its
Canopy. overestimation if (of) the value of the turbulence energy
around the frontal corner and its underestimation of the
Abstract value of the lateral component of normal stress in the re­
circulation region behind the model, and the results of
The past half century has seen an unprecedented growth of LES (Large Eddy Simulation) agree fairly well with the
the world's urban population. Increasing urbanization and experimental data (SHUZO MURAKAMI et at., 1990 [2]).
concern about sustainability and quality of life issues have But Y. Gao pointed out that the standard turbulence model
produced considerable interest in air quality in urban areas. can predict well the separated and reattachment flow on
Urban ventilation implies that rural areas may supply rela­ the top surface of the cube and rib if the wall boundary is
tively clean air into urban canopies and distribute rural air treated properly (Y. Gao et at., 2003 [3]). The influence of
within them to help air exchange and pollutant dilution. the street geometrical aspect ratio leads to a refinement of
This paper numerically studied rural air flow through square the flow separation in three regimes, popularized by Oke
building arrays at different wind angles. The building area (1988) [4], taking into account not only the influence of
the buildings on the flow of the surface layer just above
density (Ap' i. e. the rario between the plan area of build-
the roofs but also the structure of the recirculating flow
ings viewed from above and the total underlying surface within the street. Results show that street aspect ratio (Oke,
area) is restricted to 0.25, while the building numbers in 1988 [4]),area densities (Buccolieri et at., 2010 [5]),build­
the square region change from 9 to 81. A two-dimensional ing arrangements (Kanda, 2006 [6]), and street orienta­
(20) k-8 turbulence model is employed to solve the Rey­ tions (Kim and Baik, 2004 [7]) are the key urban parame­
nolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations.The model is em­ ters. Kanda (2006b) found that staggered arrays tend to
ployed to predict the influence of the building numbers on produce stronger drag force to the approach wind than
flow capacity in wind angle altering from 00 - 4Y. 3D mo­ aligned arrays. Hang et at. (2009) [8] studied pollutant dis­
del is employed to solve this problem as well. It's conflrmed persion in idealized round city model with ambient wind
that fewer buildings get better flow capacity. Smaller wind directions of 00, 15°, 30°, 45° . They found that small in-
angle improves this process as well. °
cident wind angles of 00 and 15 are better for the pollut­
ant removal and air exchange than large incident angle of
1 Introduction °
30 . This method is effectively and widely used in urban
Frequent hazy weather in Chinese cities has aroused much ventilation research, but there is a lack of research on the
concerns, and inspired many studies on urban ventilation. influence of different building scales. Understanding the
The wind from rural areas is relatively clean and cool,which influence of different building scales on urban ventilation
purifles the urban canopy environment when flowing through is quite important for improving urban air quality and op­
it. The buildings in urban areas play a vital role in this proc­ timal design. The present work aims to calculate the flow
ess. Understanding the impact caused by it can help to de­ capacity in building arrays with different building scales
velop guidelines for better urban planning [9]- [16]. and same area density with CFO code ANSYS FLUENT.
An acceptable pedestrian level wind environment in out­ Ambient wind angle is changed as well, and 2-D simula­
door public areas has become a major design considera­ tion with k-s model is used.
tion for new urban planning. Well designed building ar­
rays can provide flne wind environment, which is impor­ 2 Description of Numerical Simulations
tant for human comfort and energy conservation.
Wind tunnel experiment is the main method for urban 2.1 Governing Equations
ventilation research, which is expensive and time-consum­
The Reynold-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations
ing. Numerical simulation is provided to be a much cheap­
er and time-saving way, and proved to be effective when with standard k-s turbulence model are widely used to
compared with wind tunnel experimental data. model urban turbulence flow. The momentum conser­
Numerical simulation using the model accurately re­ vation equations and two transport equations for the turbu-
produce the velocity and pressure field with a fine-mesh lent kinetic energy (k) and its dissipation rate (s) are
resolution around the model (SHUZO MURAKAMI et at., solved to get time-average flow variables.
'Corresponding author. The dimensionless governing equations for a steady, in-
compressible, and neutrally-stratified fluid flow are as
follows:

au av
ax
+
ay
=0 (1)
���
( ) a (uv ) a
----ax- +----ay- =ax
a uu ( ) ( )au
+
a au
-
ap
���
( ) ( )
Veffax ay Veff ay ax
(2)
+
a au
ax Veffax
+
a av
ay Veffax
���
( ) +a (vv ) = �
a uv ( ) ( )
v
av
+
�
v
av
_
ap Figure 1. The distribution ofbuildings in building area.

( ) ( )
ax ay ax effax ay eff ay ax
(3) buildings in lateral and longitudinal direction are equal,
a au a av
+- v +- --
which means there is N x N buildings in each array.
ax eff ax ay Veffax

( ) ( )
The building array is placed in a numerical wind tunnel,
a (uK) a (vK)
which provides reasonable boundary conditions for the

----ax-+----aY = ax
a aK a aK
rK + rK numerical calculation. The computational domain in Fig-
ax ay ay (4)
ure 2 is used for all wind directions ( 0", IS" ,300 ,4S" ) . Mass
+GK -E

( J �( J
flux is calculated in four faces (see Figure 3). The distance
a uE ( ) + a (vE) = � r
aE
+ r
aE
between building domain and outlet boundary are large
enough for outflow boundary condition, where the distur­
ax ay ax r. ax ay r. ay
(S) bance of the building areas are negligible.
E E2
+G1£GK - 2.3 FLUENT Flow Setup
C £K
K 2
The second order upwind differencing scheme was used to dis­
K2 V K2 I . cretize the advection terms. All transport equations were dis­
vt = C,
, - = --
+C - = -+Vt IS the turbu-
E r
Veff UoL JI E Re cretized by the second order upwind scheme. The discretized
differential equations were solved by the SIMPLE algorithm.
lence viscosity;
Velocity inlet is used in both south and west face of the
rK = -
v CII K2
+--
1 vt
= -+- 'IS the d'IsslpatlOn rate 0f
. . computational domain, and at north and east face outflow
uoL O'k E Re O'k boundary condition is used. The governing equation of
k; outflow is as follow:
v CJl K2 1 vt • . . ap ap au av
lle" = -

UoL
+--
0'" E
= -+- IS the d'IsslpatlOn rate 0f
O'e
-
_ -
_ -
_ -
_ 0 (8)
Re ax ay ax ay
&;
The velocity at inlet is defmed as:

( a)
To evaluate GK in a manner consistent with Boussinesq

{ [( J ( J] ( J}
assumptions,it can be further written as, U = urefsin
v = vr cos ( a )
(9)
2 ef
au av 2 au aV 2
GK = vt 2 -
+ - + +- -
(6)
ax ay ax ay where the reference velocity Uf f = .fim/s ;
e
No-slip wall and wall function is used at solid boundary.
where Cel' Co2' C , O'k' O'e are closure constants, the The wall function is described as follows, and the law of a
Jl
value of which are as follows: logarithm is used;

{ C£PC£2' CJl, O'k' O'£ } = {1.44,1.92,0.09,1,1.3} (7) U+ =�ln EY+ ( ) (10)

K

2.2 Model Descriptions

Seven building models are calculated in this work. The Y [ � ±J
C k

y+ (11)
( a ) are set equal to length of
buildings are treated as aligned square obstacles. The dis-
v
tance between buildings

building (see Figure 1). The building area density (Ap)

remains O.2S, which means that the building arrays cover u
. �
u
( c;k" 1 (12)
the same proportion in this study. The number (N) of 'wi p
3 Results and Discussion It seems that, with large incident wind angle, buildings
may produce stronger drag force and generate more re­
In order to evaluate the flow capacity of the building ar­ circulation regions within the building arrays (see Figure
rays,respectively,the mass flux is monitored at four faces S(a)-Figure Sed)). More vortex is observed at 45' wind
as follows: angel, and the vortex structure is more complicated. En­
The toal mass flux is defined as follow: ergy is dissipated in this areas and air is hard to refresh in
these areas. So it is better to design the main streets paral­
F;otal =IFrcl+IFwl+IFvl+lF,1 (13) lel to the local prevailing wind direction.

�
'#��
The result shows that when the number of buildings in­

ia
creases, the flow capacity of the building arrays gets
worse. Less rural wind will flow through the urban street D8� 1 (� _
(see Figure 4). While there exists an unexpected rise
when the number of buildings increase from 8 x8 to 9 x 9 - �

at 0' wind angle. One reason for this phenomenon is that

the computational domain is not symmetry when the wind
angle is not 45, when the angle gets smaller,this disequi­
librium increases, and may cause inaccurate solution. The
increase of building density may be another reason for this 0.2 0.4 0.8
phenomenon, the mesh is much more narrower at these
cases. Further research need to be done for it to find the
reasons.

1
Computational domain
)0
N
20l
W+E
S

- �- 5L
�
20L
building arrays
5L

' " /tJJ '

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8
x
(b)
-�-
�li
�rli�� �-l�1,r1 -l�-
Figure 2. The two-dimensional calcula­
tion model ofthe building arrays.

D'6
�-=-� =-::: �
N !

: W�lq �- [iI�
)0 i Il I .

LE
f �.
�'f!!/�=--

- S /--- ��
_.0
_ JI
��=----- �(
0� ��l�==----c r -;-� , I , ,

Figure 3. The diagram ofthe flow monitoring. 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

THE TOTAL MASS FLUX

_D· _15·
2.3 __ 3D· � 45·

2.1

1.9

1.7

1.5

1.3

1.1

0.9 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

x
3X3 4X4 5x5 6x6 7X7 8x8 gxg
(d)
Figure 4. Change trend ofthe total mass flux. Figure 5. The streamlines in urban area with 9 buildings.
 The velocity contours of different building arrays at
four wind directions are displayed (see Figure 6) (given in
Appendix 1). Wind speed is found to decrease quickly
after the wind flowing through four rows, even the scale
of each building is getting smaller. It is important to know
how to distribute rural air within such urban canopies
more effectively, improving air exchanges between urban
areas and their surrounding rural areas. Rural air is well
distributed in larger wind angel (4Y and 30e).
4 Conclusion
This paper presented a study on how different building
scales and wind angles affect the flow capacity of the
building arrays at the same building area density. A stan­
dard k-s model is used in FLUENT solver to simulate 2-
D building arrays, and SIMPLE algorithm is used for
solving the discretization equations. Four wind angles
( )
° ° 0 °
0 ,15 ,30 ,45 are studied in each building array to eva­
luate how it influences the flow capacity at the same time.
The results indicate that with smaller wind angles, the
flow capacity of the building arrays is better than that with
larger wind angle. Seven building scales are studied; the
results show that with the decease of building scale, the
capacity of the building arrays is better.
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by the Thousand
Youth Talents Plan from the Organization Department of
CCP Central Committee (Wuhan University, China, Grant
No. 208273259), Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foun­
dation for Distinguished Young Scholars supported by
Hunan Provincial Government (Grant No. 14JJ1002, Mul­
tiple fluid mechanisms of urban ventilation and its safety
through source identification), the Natural Science Foun­
dation of China (NSFC, Grant No. 51208192, Instability
theory and inverse convection design of air flow patterns
in the large space; NSFC, Grant No. 51304233, Multi-phy­
sics diffusion of leaked natural gas and backward time in­
verse identification of leakage sources), Twelve-Five Na­
tional Supportive Plan from Ministry of Science and Tech­
nology of P. R. China (Grant No. 201lBAJ03B07) and the
National Key Basic Research Program of China (973 Pro­
gram, Grant No. 2014CB239203).
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Appendix 1

2 3 4

"f
12
� "f 'f� ,..
0.8

0.6
>-
OA

0.2

-0.2

- . 04
I I t I [ I !
-0.5 0.5 0.5 .5
-0 0.5 -0.5
x
-0.5
X X

5 6 7 8

1.'

1.2

0.8

D.'
>-
OA

0.2

-0.2

-U.4
[ [
-0.' D.' -0.' 0.'
t
D.'
I I
0.'
X x
-0.'
X X

9 10 11 12
,
"

,2

0.8

0.'
>-
0..

0.2

·0,2

-OA
I I
0.' 0
[ [
-0.' -0.'
X x

13 14 15 16
 >- >-

17 18 19 20

14
,

1.2

0.'

06
>-
0.4

0.'

-0,2

r r
-0,4
.o.
, , ,
-0 . 5
,
0.' 0.' .o.• 0.' 0.'
X X X

21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

Figure 6. The distribution ofmean velocity in urban area.