Improving schoolyard wind environments: Case studies in two schools in Nanjing

Anqi Liu,Qiuxia Xu,Lingyun Han,Zhen Xu,Jiahao Gao

doi:10.5937/gp23-24183

Abstract

Wind environment as an essential aspect of urban micro-climate is usually studied as an important factor affecting human wind comfort and thermal comfort in public open space. Less studied is how wind environments influence schoolyard serving for children and teenagers who are more sensitive to air temperature and air pollution. This paper presents a study using XFlow for wind speed evaluation based on CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation, and Ecotect Analysis for thermal comfort evaluation. Choosing Nanjing Mochou Lake Primary School and Nanjing NO.13 Middle School Suojin Campus as case studies, it offers an evaluation of wind environments in these two schoolyards and surrounding open spaces. Simulation shows that improvements should be made to build better wind environments around both schools. Scenarios are developed subsequently by adjusting buildings in study areas at the scale of blocks and school buildings, proving the efficiency of improvements for a more comfortable wind environments. This study focuses on schoolyard wind environments from the standpoint of children and teenagers, suggesting that research on urban micro-climate can be expanded in multiple directions so that as many social groups in different ages as possible benefits, i.e. have healthier urban life.

Highlights

Consideration of climatic factors in urban design can trace back to around 2000 years ago, Vitruvius (BC 32-22) argued that, in his classic The Ten Books on Architecture, urban form and architectural layout can be influenced by different climatic conditions
This paper presents a study using XFlow for wind speed evaluation based on CFD simulation, and Ecotect Analysis for thermal comfort evaluation
Wind speed distributions in study areas are generated in XFlow based on CFD technique, and thermal comfort distributions are calculated through Ecotect Analysis

Summary

Introduction

Consideration of climatic factors in urban design can trace back to around 2000 years ago, Vitruvius (BC 32-22) argued that, in his classic The Ten Books on Architecture, urban form and architectural layout can be influenced by different climatic conditions. Wind environments involving wind comfort and thermal comfort has become a research stream receiving much attention in multiple studies. In terms of urban form, Oke (1988) found that the ratio of canyon walls height and canyon width (H/W) along with sky view factor (SVF) have effects on urban wind environments. Ubota et al (2008) identified the decrease of wind speed at pedestrian level as the density of buildings increases. Applying automatic algorithms to accurately assess non-stationary outdoor thermal comfort in urban areas, Bajsanski et al (2015) predicted that the building height and density

Results

Discussion

Conclusion