Abstract
Due to a rapid increase in urbanisation, accurate wind microclimate assessment is of crucial importance. Evaluating wind flows around buildings is part of the planning application process in the design of new developments. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are carried out for a case study, representing the East Village in the London Olympic Park. Following a validation test against experimental data for a simpler urban configuration, the key input parameters, including appropriate boundary conditions, mesh setting and type of turbulence model, are selected for the Olympic Park model. All the simulations are conducted using the commercial code STARCCM+ under steady-state conditions with the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) method. The turbulence is modelled using different common variants of eddy-viscosity models (EVMs) including standard k-ε, realizable k-ε and standard and shear stress transport (SST) k-ω. The results demonstrate that standard and realisable k-ε models correlate very well with the experimental data, while some discrepancies are found with standard and SST k-ω. Following the determination of areas of high velocity, appropriate tree planting is proposed to overcome the effect of corner and downwash acceleration. With the optimised arrangement of trees and using specific types of tree (e.g., birch), wind speeds at the pedestrian level are reduced by 3.5, 25 and 66% in three main regions of interest. Moreover, we investigate the effects of tree heights. The obtained results illustrate that the wind velocity reduces when the crowns of the trees are located closer to the buildings and the ground. Our high-resolution CFD simulation and results offer a quantitative tool for wind microclimate assessment and optimised design and arrangement of trees around buildings to improve pedestrian comfort.
Highlights
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were conducted for three different test cases
Many factors can affect wind mitigation including wind direction, tree type, tree age, stem height, tree height, crown height, crown width, diameter at breast height, distance between trees and distance of buildings to the trees [25,26]. Considering all these parameters simultaneously to find the optimised type of tree and arrangement is in the scope of a parametric study
This section of our study dealt with optimising the arrangement of trees after the tree selection
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. A rapid increase in the construction of high-rise buildings creates the need for wind microclimate assessment. Wind microclimate assessment is performed during the design stage to show the results of wind impact on the design, which is followed by proposing methods to mitigate the wind in areas of high velocities for pedestrian comfort. Assessment of wind conditions around buildings is conducted using observational techniques and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. Observational techniques are performed through measurement (e.g., wind tunnel testing) and are widely used for validation of simulations conducted using CFD techniques
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