An Analysis of Elevated Building Design on Building Surrounded Outdoor Wind Environment

Abstract

Building elevated design is one of the methods that may improve the outdoor wind environment. Integrating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation into an architectural design can provide an informed decision for architectural design. In this study, CFD simulation was used to explore elevated design impacts on a case study building wind environment at the building’s pedestrian height. Simulation results from two CFD programs were compared and both showed that the elevated design of the case study building had a good effect on improving the wind environment at the pedestrian height of 1.5 m. The elevated design can increase the wind speed of the 1.5 m pedestrian height in the building’s windward area when the elevated height is 2.4～3.0 m. When the elevated design height is above 3.0 m, the elevated design has little impact on the 1.5 m height wind speed at the building’s windward area. Taking the case study building as a prototype, the impact of various building heights and elevated widths on the pedestrian height outdoor wind speeds were explored. Results show that when the building height is between 24 and 72 m, increasing the building height can increase the wind speeds of at pedestrian height in the high wind speed area of the windward area, but may gradually reduce the wind speed at the pedestrian height in the low wind speed area of the windward area around the building. When the total height of the building and the elevated height is unchanged, results show that increasing the elevated width of the building can increase the pedestrian height wind speeds in the high wind speed area of the windward area and has no significant impacts on the pedestrian height wind field distribution in the low wind speed area of the windward area.