Pedestrian-Level Wind Environment Assessment of Shenyang’s Residential Areas through Numerical Simulations

Jiuhong Zhang,Xiaoqian Zhang

doi:10.3390/su14010380

Abstract

In recent decades, increasing urbanization has increased construction land shortages, which has made people pay more attention to the utilization of vertical space. The emergence of more and more high-rise buildings has affected the wind environment at the pedestrian level, especially in residential areas. In this research, the typical patterns of the layouts of residential buildings in Shenyang were investigated and summarized, and the wind environment of the residential areas of different architecture layouts was simulated according to the climatic conditions in Shenyang. After analyzing the simulation results, a typical layout mode for the residential areas in Shenyang was developed to facilitate the establishment of a favorable wind environment. In comparison with different building layouts, a staggered layout of slab buildings, half-enclosed layout of point buildings with openings on the south side, slab-point combined buildings with slab buildings on the north side, and point buildings on the south side were found to be the most suitable layouts for Shenyang’s climate. Thus, this study can provide guidance to designers and urban planners in addition to practical suggestions for residential planning.

Highlights

In Chinese megacities, residential areas are among the most important activity spaces in urban areas
The wind environments of different architecture arrangements were analyzed based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Fluent software
The wind environment design of the residential areas in Shenyang mainly focuses on wind protection in winter

Summary

Introduction

In Chinese megacities, residential areas are among the most important activity spaces in urban areas. The residential areas in many Chinese megacities are composed of high-rise buildings, leading to excessive instantaneous wind speeds in some areas. High wind speeds at the pedestrian level can lead to uncomfortable or even dangerous conditions [2,3,4,5,6]. Many government agencies have been studying new policies to improve comfort and safety with regard to high wind speeds around buildings. It is quite important to evaluate wind comfort at the pedestrian level and have an acceptable wind environment from the development perspective of urban planning

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion