Wind Engineering Study on the Surface-Pressure Characteristic of a Triangular Prism Located Behind a Porous Fence

Abstract

The effects of porous wind fence on the pressure characteristics around a 2-dimensional prism model of triangular cross-section were investigated experimentally. The fence and prism model were embedded in a neutral atmospheric surface boundary layer over the city suburb. In this study, various fences of different porosity, back fence, inclination angle of prism and location of additional back prisms were tested to investigate their effects on the pressure and wall shear stress of the prism surface. The fence and prism had the same height of 40 mm and Reynolds number based on the model height was Re=3.9*10. The porous fence with porosity 40% was found to be the best wind fence for decreasing the mean and pressure fluctuations on the prism surface. By installing the fence of porosity 40%, the wall shear stress on the windward surface of prism was largely decreased up to 1/3 of that without the fence. This indicates that the porous fence is most effective to abate the wind erosion. Pressure fluctuations on the model surface were decreased more than half when a back fence was located behind the prism in addition to the front fence. With locating several back prisms and decreasing the inclination angle of triangular prism, the pressure fluctuations on the model surface were increased on the contrary.