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http://dx.doi.org/10.14191/Atmos.2015.25.4.685

Effects of Trees on Flow and Scalar Dispersion in an Urban Street Canyon  

Kang, Geon (Department of Environmental Atmospheric Sciences, Pukyong National University)
Kim, Jae-Jin (Department of Environmental Atmospheric Sciences, Pukyong National University)
Publication Information
Atmosphere / v.25, no.4, 2015 , pp. 685-692 More about this Journal
Abstract
In this study, the effects of trees on flow and scalar dispersion in an urban street canyon were investigated using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. For this, we implemented the drag terms of trees to the CFD model, and compared the CFD-simulated results to the wind-tunnel results. For comparison, we considered the same building configuration as the wind-tunnel experiment. The trees were located at the center of street canyon with the aspect ratio (defined as the ratio of the street width to the building height) of 1. First, the flow characteristics were analyzed in the tree-free and high-density tree cases and the results showed that the CFD model reproduced well the flow pattern of the wind-tunnel experiment and reflected the drag effect of trees in the street canyon. Then, the dispersion characteristics of scalar pollutants were investigated for the tree-free, low-density tree and medium-density tree cases. In the tree-free case, the nondimensionalized concentration distribution simulated by the CFD model was quite similar to that in the wind-tunnel experiment in magnitude and pattern. The correlation coefficients between the measured and simulated concentrations are more than 0.9 in all the cases. As the tree density increased, nondimensionalized concentration increased (decreased) near the wall of the upwind (downwind) building, which resulted from the decrease in wind speed case by the drag effect of trees. However, the CFD model underestimated (overestimated) the concentration near the wall of upwind (downwind) building.
Keywords
CFD model; wind-tunnel experiment; tree-drag effects; flow and dispersion characteristics; street canyon;
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