Abstract
Studying the mechanism of pollutant transport around an isolated building is essential to address the environmental issue of air pollution around buildings and to understand the intricate process of pollutant dispersion in urban environments. In this paper, an effective numerical approach is used to study the effects of building heights and widths on airflow and pollutant dispersion around an isolated building. The source of pollutants is behind the building. The pollutant is confined to the lower areas as a result of small vortices behind the low-rise buildings, and transported to the wake area. Whereas high-rise buildings make the pollutant move to an upper region. At the pedestrian level, the wake area of the lower building stores more pollution. Therefore, the environment around the low-rise buildings may be more hazardous. The concentration of pollutants is greater at higher altitudes around wider buildings. Pollutants are transferred to the sides of wider buildings at the pedestrian level, leading to lower concentrations in the wake-central area. A wider building poses a greater lateral dangerous-area, while a narrower building results in a longer central wake area that is hazardous.
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Abbreviations
- b :
-
Side of building
- c :
-
Concentration
- C μ, C d1, C d2 :
-
Model constant
- D :
-
Molecular diffusion coefficient
- d w :
-
Distance to the closest wall
- ELES:
-
Embedded large-eddy simulation
- f d, F 1, F 2, f d1, f d2 :
-
Shielding function
- h :
-
Height of building
- h max :
-
Maximum edge length of the cell
- J i :
-
Turbulent concentration flux
- k :
-
Turbulence kinetic energy
- LES:
-
Large-eddy simulation
- NMSE:
-
Normalized mean square error
- p :
-
Pressure
- P k :
-
Generation of turbulence kinetic energy
- PLES:
-
Production-limited eddy simulation
- P ples :
-
Production term in the PLES model
- RANS:
-
Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes
- S :
-
Modulus of the mean rate of strain tensor
- Sc t :
-
Turbulent Schmidt number
- S ij :
-
Strain rate tensor
- S ij d :
-
Strain rate tensor in WALE model
- SGS:
-
Subgrid scale
- SST:
-
Shear Stress Transport
- t :
-
Time
- TKE:
-
Turbulence kinetic energy
- u h :
-
Inflow velocity at height of building
- u i, u j :
-
Component of the velocity
- URANS:
-
Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes
- V :
-
Cell volume
- w :
-
Width of the building
- WALE:
-
Wall-adapting local eddy-viscosity
- x, y, z :
-
Coordinate axis
- α, β, β*, σ k, σ ω, σ ω2 :
-
Model constants
- δ ij :
-
Kronecker delta
- ε :
-
Turbulence dissipation rate
- κ :
-
Von Kármán constant
- μ :
-
Viscosity
- μ sgs :
-
Subgrid scale eddy viscosity
- μ t :
-
Turbulent viscosity
- ν :
-
Kinematic viscosity
- ρ :
-
Density
- Ω :
-
Magnitude of vorticity tensor
- ω :
-
Specific dissipation rate
- ¯:
-
Ensemble averaged
- i,j:
-
Vector
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52078146). We also acknowledge the Network Center of Guangzhou University for providing HPC computing resources.
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Ding, P., Zhou, X. Numerical Study on Effects of Heights and Widths on Airflow and Pollutant Dispersion around a Building. KSCE J Civ Eng 28, 1645–1656 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-024-0899-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-024-0899-5