Impact of building façade geometrical details on pollutant dispersion in street canyons

Xing Zheng*, Hamid Montazeri, Bert Blocken

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

38 Citations (Scopus)
9 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The present study investigates the impact of building façade geometrical details on the pollutant transport mechanism in long street canyons. Large-eddy simulations (LES), extensively validated with experiments, are performed for four cases: (i) street canyon without façade balconies, (ii) street canyon with balconies at both windward and leeward façades, (ii) street canyon with balconies only at the windward façade and (iv) street canyon with balconies only at the leeward façade. The results show that the building balconies can strongly affect the wind flow field and pollutant dispersion in long street canyons. The most significant impact is observed for the two street canyon cases with balconies at the windward façade, which strongly obstruct the airflow from penetrating deep into the bottom of the canyon. The presence of balconies only at the windward façade and at both façades can increase the area-weighted mean pollutant concentration in the vertical center plane inside the canyon by 80% and 106%, respectively, and reduce the mean pollutant exchange velocity (Ue) by 46% and 54%, respectively. The analysis of the vertical mean convective and turbulent mass fluxes indicates that the presence of balconies mainly decreases the convective contribution to Ue, while the impact on the turbulent contribution is smaller.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108746
JournalBuilding and Environment
Volume212
Early online date1 Jan 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2022

Keywords

  • Air pollution
  • Balcony
  • Computational fluid dynamics
  • Façade design
  • Large-eddy simulation
  • Urban ventilation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Environmental Engineering
  • Civil and Structural Engineering
  • Geography, Planning and Development
  • Building and Construction

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