Pedestrian-Level Wind Environment near Super-tall Buildings with Unconventional Configurations in an Urban Area

Abstract

The impact of a super-tall building (400 m in height) with unconventional configurations on the pedestrian-level wind (PLW) environment in an urban area was evaluated using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation. The simulation employed 3-D RANS equations to simulate the super-tall building in 15 unconventional configurations. The PLW environment was assessed us-ing a normalized mean wind speed ratio (K). The analysis shows significant modifications in the PLW environment near the super-tall building including an increase in magnitude of wind speed at the pedestrian level, and the formation of areas with high and low wind speeds with different sizes. These modifications strongly depend on building configuration such as the size of the frontal area, the shape of building’s corners, the location of openings, and variation in cross-section along the building’s height