Abstract
Numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the effects of building height ratio (i.e., HR, the height ratio of the upstream building to the downstream building) on the air quality in buildings beside street canyons, and both regular and staggered canyons were considered for the simulations. The results show that the building height ratio affects not only the ventilation fluxes of the rooms in the downstream building but also the pollutant concentrations around the building. The parameter, outdoor effective source intensity of a room, is then proposed to calculate the amount of vehicular pollutants that enters into building rooms. Smaller value of this parameter indicates less pollutant enters the room. The numerical results reveal that HRs from 2/7 to 7/2 are the favorable height ratios for the regular canyons, as they obtain smaller values than the other cases. While HR values of 5/7, 7/7, and 7/5 are appropriate for staggered canyons. In addition, in terms of improving indoor air quality by natural ventilation, the staggered canyons with favorable HR are better than those of the regular canyons.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51578121 and No. 51478098), the Innovation Foundation of Shanghai Education Commission (Grant No. 14ZZ073), and the Project of Shanghai Universities Young Teacher Training Scheme (Grant No. ZZGCD15087). The authors would like to thank Dr. D. Gottfried for providing valuable comments on the manuscript.
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Yang, F., Zhong, K., Chen, Y. et al. Simulations of the impacts of building height layout on air quality in natural-ventilated rooms around street canyons. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 23620–23635 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-9934-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-9934-0