Computational Modeling of Wind Flow in an Urban Environment: A Case Study Navi Mumbai

Abstract

AbstractIn developing cities, due to lack of land availability, skyscrapers are emerging. For an urban environment, natural ventilation, pedestrian level wind behavior is the important requirement to provide comfort to the occupant. Wind flow behavior over an isolated building is different from grouped buildings. But the development of skyscraper leads to improper air flow movement and results in occupancy discomfort. Hence, proper planning of building arrangements is essential for the proper flow of wind in an urban environment. This paper focuses on simulations of wind flow around the building and evaluates the wind conditions at pedestrian level using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package available in ANSYS Fluent software. The selected area for the study is sector 44A Navi Mumbai due to its presence of medium to tall buildings. The buildings are scaled to 1:300 and modeled using solid work software. Turbulence model of k–ε is used in this study for external flow due to its accuracy and faster rate of convergence available in commercial CFD code. The analysis is carried out with different wind angles such as 0˚, 90˚, 180˚, and 270˚. From the results, occupancy comfort criteria are checked for various locations as per the criteria A. D Penwarden and A. F Wise, Wake region are identified at different wind angles.KeywordsComputational fluid dynamicsUrban environmentTurbulence modelNatural ventilationPedestrian level wind behavior