Abstract
The building cross-section shape significantly affects the flow characteristics around buildings, especially the recirculation region behind the high-rise building. Eight generic building shapes including square, triangle, octagon, T-shaped, cross-shaped, #-shaped, H-shaped and L-shaped are examined to elucidate their effects on the flow patterns, recirculation length L and areas A using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) approach. The sizes and positions of the vortexes behind the buildings are found to be substantially affected by the building shapes and subsequently changing the recirculation flows. The recirculation length L is in the range of 1.6b–2.6b with an average of 2b. The maximum L is found for L-shaped building (2.6b) while the shortest behind octagon building (1.6b). The vertical recirculation area Av is in the range of 1.5b2–3.2b2 and horizontal area Ah in 0.9b2–2.2b2. The L, Av and Ah generally increase with increasing approaching frontal area when the wind direction changes but subject to the dent structures of the #-shaped and cross-shaped buildings. The area-averaged wind velocity ratio (AVR), which is proposed to assess the ventilation performance, is in the range of 0.05 and 0.14, which is around a three-fold difference among the different building shapes. The drag coefficient parameterized by Ah varies significantly, suggesting that previous models without accounting for building shape effect could result in large uncertainty in the drag predictions. These findings provide important reference for improving pedestrian wind environment and shed some light on refining the urban canopy parameterization by considering the building shape effect.
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Abbreviations
- A :
-
recirculation area
- A f :
-
frontal area of the buildings
- A h :
-
horizontal recirculation area
- A p :
-
building floor area
- A t :
-
total floor area
- A v :
-
vertical recirculation area
- AVR:
-
area-averaged wind velocity ratio
- b :
-
width (m)
- C 1 :
-
curve-fitting coefficient
- C 1ε :
-
modelling constant
- C 2 :
-
curve-fitting coefficient
- C 2ε :
-
modelling constant
- C d :
-
drag coefficient
- C R :
-
drag constant for an isolated, surface-mounted roughness element
- C μ :
-
empirical modelling constant
- d :
-
ground-normal displacement height
- h :
-
height (m)
- k :
-
turbulent kinematic energy (TKE)
- l :
-
length (m)
- L :
-
recirculation length
- MVR:
-
mean wind velocity ratio
- P k :
-
TKE production
- ̅p :
-
kinematic pressure
- R :
-
speed-up ratio
- R 2 :
-
determination of coefficient
- RMSE:
-
root mean square error
- U :
-
mean wind velocity
- U avg :
-
area-averaged wind velocity
- U i :
-
mean wind velocity at point i with the building
- U i0 :
-
mean wind velocity at point i without the building
- U ref :
-
reference wind speed
- u*:
-
friction velocity
- ū i :
-
mean velocity
- VR:
-
wind velocity ratio
- x i :
-
instantaneous position
- z :
-
height coordinate
- z 0 :
-
aerodynamic roughness length
- z ref :
-
reference height
- δij :
-
Kronecker delta
- ε}:
-
TKE dissipation rate
- κ :
-
von Karman constant
- λ f :
-
frontal area index
- λ p :
-
planar area index
- ν t :
-
turbulent viscosity
- σ k :
-
Prandtl number
- σ ε :
-
Prandtl number
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China — Youth Science Foundation Project No. 42205073, Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation No. 2021A1515110182, Guangdong Natural Science Fund No. 2023A1515012863, and the Innovation Group Project of the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai) No. 311020001.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Numerical simulation, model validation, visualization and data analysis were performed by Keyi Chen and Ziwei Mo. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Keyi Chen and manuscripts editing was performed by Ziwei Mo and Jian Hang. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Chen, K., Mo, Z. & Hang, J. The recirculation flow after different cross-section shaped high-rise buildings with applications to ventilation assessment and drag parameterization. Build. Simul. 17, 509–524 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-024-1103-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-024-1103-z