Wind Tunnel Experiment for Pedestrian Wind Comfort in Sun Valley Campus

Abstract

Various urban spaces around the world, were designed and built in respect with the design theories in order to satisfy different requests of users and inhabitants and to provide a quality urban spaces. The use of these spaces by the city citizen depends on many factors that influence their decision while choosing the urban space where to spend time. Among these factors, the comfort provided in any area is a crucial determinant that depend mainly on a wide range of climatic parameters such as air temperature, wind velocity, relative humidity, solar radiation etc. However, the impact of the micro-climates parameters on the user’s comfort in these open spaces has often been ignored and architects tend to pay more attention and consider the indoor comfort, but they may not consider the effect of their buildings on the outdoor environment, and pedestrian comfort. The article concerns an experimental study on the effects of the wind velocity on the pedestrian comfort and safety in a campus inside a bigger project called Laser Valley Land of Lights. With the purpose to provide a project with a complete harmony with the physical elements of the environment. Due to the fact that the interaction between the wind and the city buildings, create aerodynamic phenomena around building that impact directly the outdoor environment and make the study of the human outdoor comfort more complex. The study was carried out at the Aerodynamics and Wind Engineering Laboratory “Constantin Iamandi” (LAIV) from the Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest (UTCB). The project Laser Valley Land of Lights aims to implement the world’s most powerful laser, Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics ELI NP Project. The campus under study won an international competition by providing an open research ecosystem taking into consideration that is based on green building and sustainable development. In this paper we describe the result obtained from the experiment performed in the TASL1-M Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel on the effects of the wind on the pedestrian comfort and the mitigation solution proposed for the critical and uncomfortable areas detected.