Effect of Galleries on the Wind Flow Structure and Pollutant Transport Within Street Canyons With or Without Facade Roughness Elements (Balconies)

Abstract

This paper investigates how the structure of the flow field and the vertical distribution of the pollutant concentration near the wall facades of street canyons are affected by the presence of some elements such as street level galleries. Numerical results are presented for various gallery geometries in combination with facade roughness elements (balconies) for a canyon of an aspect ratio equal to h/w=2.33. The results were obtained by a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation employing the ANSYS-FLUENT suite that incorporated the k-e turbulent (RNG) model. The simulation generated several flow structures inside the canyon (mainly vortices), whose characteristic properties (e.g. number, strength and size) are discussed in terms of the effect of the galleries on the flow field structure and the roughness generated by the building façade balconies. The results indicate a significant influence on both the flow field structure and the mass concentration distribution of the polluting particles.