Wind tunnel study on flows over various two-dimensional idealized urban-like surfaces

Abstract

Extensive human activities (e.g. increased traffic emissions) emit a wide range of pollutants resulting in poor urban area air quality. Unlike open, flat and homogenous rural terrain, urban surface is complicated by the presence of buildings, obstacles and narrow streets. The irregular urban surfaces thus form a random roughness that further modifies the near-surface flows and pollutant dispersion. In this study, a physical modelling approach is employed to commence a series of wind tunnel experiments to study the urban-area air pollution problems. The flow characteristics over different hypothetical urban roughness surfaces were studied in a wind tunnel in isothermal conditions. Preliminary experiments were conducted based on six types of idealized two-