• Wind and Structures
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.275-289
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• 2008

Large eddy simulations have been performed within and over different types of urban building arrays. This paper adopted three dimensionless parameters, building frontal area density (${\lambda}_f$) the variation degree of building height (${\sigma}_h$), and the staggered degree of building range ($r_s$), to study the systematic influence of building spacing, height and layout on wind and turbulent characteristics. The following results have been achieved: (1) As ${\lambda}_f$ decrease from 0.25 to 0.18, the mean flow patterns transfer from "skimming" flow to "wake interference" flow, and as ${\lambda}_f$ decrease from 0.06 to 0.04, the mean flow patterns transfer from "wake interference" flow to "isolated roughness" flow. With increasing ${\lambda}_f$, wind velocity within arrays increases, and the vortexes in front of low buildings would break, even disappear, whereas the vortexes in front of tall buildings would strengthen and expand. Tall buildings have greater disturbance on wind than low buildings do. (2) All the wind velocity profiles and the upstream profile converge at the height of 2.5H approximately. The decay of wind velocity within the building canopy was in positive correlation with ${\lambda}_f$ and $r_s$. If the height of building arrays is variable, Macdonald's wind velocity model should be modified through introducing ${\sigma}_h$, because wind velocity decreases at the upper layers of the canopy and increases at the lower layers of the canopy. (3) The maximum of turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) always locates at 1.2 times as high as the buildings. TKE within the canopy decreases with increasing ${\lambda}_f$ and $r_s$ but the maximum of TKE are very close though ${\sigma}_h$ varies. (4) Wind velocity profile follows the logarithmic law approximately above the building canopy. The Zero-plane displacement $z_d$ heighten with increasing ${\lambda}_f$, whereas the maximum of and Roughness length $z_0$ occurs when ${\lambda}_f$ is about 0.14. $z_d$ and $z_0$ heighten linearly with ${\sigma}_h$ and $r_s$, If ${\sigma}_h$ is large enough, $z_d$ may become higher than the average height of buildings.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.455-478
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• 2008

The present study aims to estimate the wind ventilation performance for pedestrian level domains from the air quality point of view. Three typical models of a dense urban area were considered and numerically simulated in order to examine the effects of the geometry of such models on wind flow characteristics, which in turn affect the air quality, within the pedestrian domain of a street canyon located within this area. The calculated flow fields were employed to estimate the exceedance probabilities within the study domain using a new approach: air exchange rate within the domain. The study has been applied to nine cities in Japan: Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo, Niigata, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Sendai, Yokohama, and Kyoto, based on their mean wind velocity data. The results demonstrated that the exceedance probability analysis of the pedestrian wind environment could be a valuable tool during the design stage of inhabited areas for the evaluation of pollutant-removal efficiency by the applied wind. Also, the calculated probabilities demonstrated substantial dependence on both the geometry of building arrays and the wind conditions of the nine cities.