Thermal Stratification Effects on Flow Over a Generic Urban Canopy

Abstract

The influence of local surface heating and cooling on flow over urban-like roughness is investigated using large-eddy simulations. By adjusting the incoming or outgoing heat flux from the ground surface, various degrees of local thermal stratification, represented by a Richardson number $$(Ri_\tau )$$ , were attained. Drag and heat transfer coefficients, turbulence structure, integral length scales, and the strength of quadrant events that contribute to momentum and heat fluxes were obtained and are compared with locally stable, neutral and unstable flows. With increasing $$Ri_\tau $$ , or equivalently as the flow characteristics change from local thermal instability to stability, a gradual decline in the drag and heat transfer coefficients is observed. These values are found to be fairly independent of the type of thermal boundary condition (constant heat flux or constant temperature) and domain size. The maps of anisotropy invariants showed that for the values of $$Ri_\tau $$ considered, turbulence structures are almost the same in shape for neutral and unstable cases but differ slightly from those in the stable case. The degree of anisotropy is found to decrease as $$Ri_\tau $$ increases from $$-2$$ to 2.5. Compared to the neutral case, the integral length scales are shortened in the streamwise and vertical direction by ground cooling, but enhanced in the vertical direction with ground heating. Quadrant analysis showed that an increase in floor heating increases the strength of ejections above the canopy. However, the contributions of updrafts or downdrafts to the heat flux are found not to be significantly influenced by the type of local thermal stratification for the values of $$Ri_\tau $$ considered. From the octant analysis, the transport mechanisms of momentum and heat above the canopy are found to be very similar in both locally unstable and stable flows.