• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.5_1
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• pp.679-692
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• 2020

We coupled a CFD model to the WRF-Chem model (WRF-CFD model) and investigated the characteristics of flows and carbon monoxide (CO) distributions in a building-congested district. We validated the simulated results against the measured wind speeds, wind directions, and CO concentrations. The WRF-Chem model simulated the winds from southwesterly to southeasterly, overestimating the measured wind speeds. The statistical validation showed that the WRF-CFD model simulated the measured wind speeds more realistically than the WRF-Chem model. The WRF-Chem model significantly underestimated the measured CO concentrations, and the WRF-CFD model improved the CO concentration prediction. Based on the statistical validation results, the WRF-CFD model improved the performance in predicting the CO concentrations by taking complicatedly distributed buildings and mobiles sources of CO into account. At 04 KST on May 22, there was a downdraft around the AQMS, and airflow with a relatively low CO concentration was advected from the upper layer. Resultantly, the CO concentration was lower at the AQMS than the surrounding area. At 15 KST on May 22, there was an updraft around the AQMS. This resulted in a slightly higher CO concentration than the surroundings. The WRF-CFD model transported CO emitted from the mobile sources to the AQMS measurement altitude, well reproducing the measured CO concentration. At 18 KST on May 22, the WRF-CFD model simulated high CO concentrations because of high CO emission, broad updraft area, and an increase in turbulent diffusion cause by wind-shear increase near the ground.

• Atmosphere
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 2012

The characteristics of flow and pollutant dispersion for fire scenarios in an urban area are numerically investigated. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model coupled to a mesoscale weather research and forecasting (WRF) model is used in this study. In order to more accurately represent the effect of topography and buildings, the geographic information system (GIS) data is used as an input data of the CFD model. Considering prevailing wind, firing time, and firing points, four fire scenarios are setup in April 2008 when fire events occurred most frequently in recent five years. It is shown that the building configuration mainly determines wind speed and direction in the urban area. The pollutant dispersion patterns are different for each fire scenario, because of the influence of the detailed flow. The pollutant concentration is high in the horse-shoe vortex and recirculation zones (caused by buildings) close to the fire point. It thus means that the potential damage areas are different for each fire scenario due to the different flow and dispersion patterns. These results suggest that the accurate understanding of the urban flow is important to assess the effect of the pollutant dispersion caused by fire in an urban area. The present study also demonstrates that CFD model can be useful for the assessment of urban environment.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.59-74
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• 2015

A coupled model system for Wind Resource Assessment (WRA) was studied. Using a mesoscale meteorological model, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, global-scale data were downscaled to the inner nested grid scale (typically a few kilometers), and then through the coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) mode, FLUENT. High-resolution results (50 m in the horizontal direction; 10 m in the vertical direction below 150 m) of the wind speed distribution data and ultimately refined wind farm information, were obtained. The refined WRF/FLUENT system was then applied to assess the wind resource over complex terrain in the northern Poyang Lake region. The results showed that the approach is viable for the assessment of wind energy.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.493-507
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• 2017

Since the late 20th century, the urbanization in Korea has been rapidly increasing, especially in major cities like Seoul, as a result of industrialization. One of the aspects of urbanization is coating the surfaces with impervious concrete or asphalt that water cannot penetrate. In addition, various urban, such as urban heat islands, which also have a great impact on the urban environment, occur within the cities. Therefore, the urban environment is gradually becoming hot and dry, and the need for more urban parks to compensate for these negative impacts is growing. Thus, several numerical studies have been conducted to assess these problems using coupled Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). In this study, an experiment was conducted to determine the accuracy of the area of the input field using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and applying the more accurate input field to a numerical simulation using ENVI-met, in order to investigate the effect of urban parks on the thermal comfort. The results showed that an input field with a larger area is more accurate than that with a smaller area, because the surrounding terrain and cities are considered in details in the experiment with the larger area. Subsequently, the more accurate input field was used in ENVI-met, and the results of this simulation showed that the presence of the urban park increased the thermal comfort and improved the humidity conditions.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.1017-1028
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• 2016

Wind information is one of the major inputs for the prediction of urban air flow using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models. Therefore, the numerical characteristics of the wind data formed at their mother domains should be clarified to predict the urban air flow more precisely. In this study, the formation characteristics of the wind data in the Seoul region were used as the inlet wind information for a CFD based simulation and were analyzed using numerical weather prediction models for weather research and forecasting (WRF). Because air flow over the central part of the Korean peninsula is often controlled not only by synoptic scale westerly winds but also by the westerly sea breeze induced from the Yellow Sea, the westerly wind often dominates the entire Seoul region. Although simulations of wind speed and air temperature gave results that were slightly high and low, respectively, their temporal variation patterns agreed well with the observations. In the analysis of the vertical cross section, the variation of wind speed along the western boundary of Seoul is simpler in a large domain with the highest horizontal resolution as compared to a small domain with the same resolution. A strong convergence of the sea breeze due to precise topography leads to the simplification of the wind pattern. The same tendency was shown in the average vertical profiles of the wind speed. The difference in the simulated wind pattern of two different domains is greater during the night than in the daytime because of atmospheric stability and topographically induced mesoscale forcing.