Impact of wedge-shaped roofs on airflow and pollutant dispersion inside urban street canyons

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate numerically the effect of wedge-shaped roofs on wind flow and pollutant dispersion in a street canyon within an urban environment. A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for evaluating airflow and pollutant dispersion within an urban street canyon is firstly developed using the FLUENT code, and then validated against the wind tunnel experiment. It was found that the model performance is satisfactory. Having established this, the wind flow and pollutant dispersion in urban street canyons of sixteen different wedge-shaped roof combinations are simulated. The computed velocity fields and concentration contours indicate that the in-canyon vortex dynamics and pollutant distriburtion are strongly dependent on the wedge-shaped roof configurations: (1) the height of a wedge-shaped roof peak is a crucial parameter determining the in-canyon vortex structure when an upward wedge-shaped roof is placed on the upwind building of a canyon; (2) both the heights of upstream and downstream corners of the upwind building have a significant impact on the in-canyon vortical flow when a downward wedge-shaped roof is placed on the upwind building of a canyon, due to flow separation as wind passes through the roof peak; (3) the height of upstream corner of the downwind building is an important factor deciding the in-canyon flow pattern when a wedge-shaped roof is placed on the downwind building of a canyon; (4) the characteristics of pollutant dispersion vary for different wedge-shaped roof configurations, and pollution levels are much higher in the “step-down” canyons relative to the “even” and “step-up” ones.