Computational fluid dynamics analysis on the effect of flow distribution on pedestrian in urban area

Abstract

Buildings in urban area consist of various heights and building arrangements. Meanwhile, the pedestrians at the area must be considered for their wind comfort and wind safety. This is because, near high-rise buildings, high wind velocities are often introduced at pedestrian level that can be experienced as uncomfortable or even dangerous. Nowadays feasibility Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for the assessment in wind engineering such as wind comfort and safety of pedestrian are very demanding. Hence, this study is conducted using CFD to analyses the effect of different building heights on the wind flow distribution towards pedestrian. The study was done on two different cases based on two different buildings (uniform height and non-uniform height) with squared and staggered arrangements. The turbulent wind over the pedestrian was acquired by solving the 3D steady state Reynold’s-Average Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations using RNG k-ε turbulence closure model. The results show that changes on the height of the buildings varies from the center of the urban canyon based on the vorticity of the flow distribution.