How tall buildings affect turbulent air flows and dispersion of pollution within a neighbourhood
File(s)Tallbuildingspaper.pdf (4.73 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Aristodemou, Elsa
Boganegra, Luz Maria
Mottet, Laetitia
Pavlidis, Dimitrios
Constantinou, Achilleas
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The city of London, UK, has seen in recent years an increase in the number of high-rise/multi-storey buildings (“skyscrapers”) with roof heights reaching 150 m and more, with the Shard being a prime example with a height of ∼310 m. This changing cityscape together with recent plans of local authorities of introducing Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHP) led to a detailed study in which CFD and wind tunnel studies were carried out to assess the effect of such high-rise buildings on the dispersion of air pollution in their vicinity. A new, open-source simulator, FLUIDITY, which incorporates the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method, was implemented; the simulated results were subsequently validated against experimental measurements from the EnFlo wind tunnel. The novelty of the LES methodology within FLUIDITY is based on the combination of an adaptive, unstructured, mesh with an eddy-viscosity tensor (for the sub-grid scales) that is anisotropic. The simulated normalised mean concentrations results were compared to the corresponding wind tunnel measurements, showing for most detector locations good correlations, with differences ranging from 3% to 37%. The validation procedure was followed by the simulation of two further hypothetical scenarios, in which the heights of buildings surrounding the source building were increased. The results showed clearly how the high-rise buildings affected the surrounding air flows and dispersion patterns, with the generation of “dead-zones” and high-concentration “hotspots” in areas where these did not previously exist. The work clearly showed that complex CFD modelling can provide useful information to urban planners when changes to cityscapes are considered, so that design options can be tested against environmental quality criteria.
Date Issued
2017-11-10
Date Acceptance
2017-10-11
Citation
Environmental Pollution, 2017, 233, pp.782-796
ISSN
0269-7491
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
782
End Page
796
Journal / Book Title
Environmental Pollution
Volume
233
Copyright Statement
Crown Copyright © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (E
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000424177000084&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Grant Number
RG80519
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Environmental Sciences
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Air pollution
Computational modelling
Large eddy simulations
Urban environment
Wind tunnel experiments
ADAPTIVE-GRID ALGORITHM
URBAN STREET CANYON
LARGE-EDDY SIMULATIONS
CFD SIMULATIONS
BOUNDARY-LAYER
TRANSPORT
AREA
QUALITY
POLLUTANTS
RESOLUTION
Publication Status
Published