Tall building influence on city wind pattern

Abstract

The population growth in big urban centers generates the necessity for tall buildings. This phenomenon happens also in tourist regions where it is necessary to host many people. However, locations with high buildings interfere with the flow of the wind and can affect the comfort and safety of pedestrians at street level. Tall buildings barrier reduces the natural ventilation in regions far from the beach. This work presents the results concerning the effects created by tall buildings on Mucuripe beach, Fortaleza, Brazil. We performed numerical simulations to verify the wind interference with buildings in an area of [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m2, using the OpenFOAM toolbox, to solve the Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations with the [Formula: see text]–[Formula: see text] turbulence model. The results showed how the obstacles alter the airflow. From them, one can identify the regions with reduced safety and pedestrian comfort, and also the weak wind zone created by the downstream of the constructions for the different wind directions that are locally observed.