Field and wind tunnel modeling of an idealized street canyon flow

Abstract

The present work examines the flow field in a simple street canyon that has been modeled at full-scale and at 1:200 scale in a wind tunnel. It relies on the detailed analysis of statistics of both flows including two-point correlation coefficients, an approach not commonly done for canyon flows. Comparison between the field and wind tunnel study has demonstrated good agreement for the mean velocity and turbulence statistics, which are typically within 20%. However, significant differences in the along-canyon mean and turbulent components have been observed and are shown to be a result of the changing of the ambient wind direction and low frequency motion present in the field. As the wind direction changes over time the result is a channeling of flow along the canyon axis. This phenomenon cannot be accurately reproduced by the wind tunnel model, which produces nominally 2D flow. The turbulence dynamics were investigated through two-point spatial correlation of the streamwise, spanwise and vertical components, which show agreement to within 15–30% between the field and wind tunnel results. From estimation of boundary layer log-law parameters it has been shown that using a single point reference velocity measurement at 10 m height to estimate the boundary layer log-law parameters is unreliable in the present case.