Pedestrian Wind Environment Around High-Rise Residential Buildings in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper describes a study of the assessment of pedestrian wind environment using two methods, namely, wind-tunnel scale modelling and numerical computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation. An estate of high-rise residential towers in Hong Kong is used as the test case. The two methods were found to yield broadly similar results in predicting wind-flow patterns through the complex. Wind factors of up to three times the free-site wind speed were predicted by both methods. There were, however, some disagreements in the detailed location and extent of the severe areas, which indicates further investigation and validation is required before CFD methods can be comfortably used in practice.