Abstract
A large-eddy simulation (LES) model, using the one-equation subgrid-scale (SGS) parametrization, was developed to study the flow and pollutant transport in and above urban street canyons. Three identical two-dimensional (2D) street canyons of unity aspect ratio, each consisting of a ground-level area source of constant pollutant concentration, are evenly aligned in a cross-flow in the streamwise direction x. The flow falls into the skimming flow regime. A larger computational domain is adopted to accurately resolve the turbulence above roof level and its influence on the flow characteristics in the street canyons. The LES calculated statistics of wind and pollutant transports agree well with other field, laboratory and modelling results available in the literature. The maximum wind velocity standard deviations σ i in the streamwise (σ u ), spanwise (σ v ) and vertical (σ w ) directions are located near the roof-level windward corners. Moreover, a second σ w peak is found at z ≈ 1.5h (h is the building height) over the street canyons. Normalizing σ i by the local friction velocity u *, it is found that σ u /u * ≈ 1.8, σ v /u * ≈ 1.3 and σ w /u * ≈ 1.25 exhibiting rather uniform values in the urban roughness sublayer. Quadrant analysis of the vertical momentum flux u′′w′′ shows that, while the inward and outward interactions are small, the sweeps and ejections dominate the momentum transport over the street canyons. In the x direction, the two-point correlations of velocity R v,x and R w,x drop to zero at a separation larger than h but R u,x (= 0.2) persists even at a separation of half the domain size. Partitioning the convective transfer coefficient Ω T of pollutant into its removal and re-entry components, an increasing pollutant re-entrainment from 26.3 to 43.3% in the x direction is revealed, suggesting the impact of background pollutant on the air quality in street canyons.
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Acknowledgements
This project is partly supported by the University Research Committee Seed Funding Programme of Basic Research of the University of Hong Kong 200811159170. The authors are also grateful to the technical support from Mr. W.K. Kwan, Mr. Frankie T.F. Cheung and Ms. Lilian Y.L. Chan with the Computer Centre, The University of Hong Kong.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Cheng, W.C., Liu, CH. Large-Eddy Simulation of Flow and Pollutant Transports in and Above Two-Dimensional Idealized Street Canyons. Boundary-Layer Meteorol 139, 411–437 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9584-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10546-010-9584-y