NUMERICAL PREDICTION OF WIND FLOW PATTERNS OVER 2D BUILDINGS

Abstract

Numerical solution techniques have been effectively used during the last few decades to study flow around building structures due to its several advantages over laboratory or field methods, such as realistic simulations of complex unsteady problems even at different Reynolds numbers and boundary conditions. The present work deals with numerical predictions of flow around three different 2D building models in upstream downstream configuration using Prandtl's mixing length hypothesis. The variable parameters considered in this study are grid spacings and size of building models. The variation of kinematic eddy viscosity and horizontal component of velocity have been shown. The contours of stream functions, horizontal component of velocity and resultant velocity have been plotted. The pressure distributions on the different faces of the building have also been computed. In this study special emphasis is given to the numerical solutions of turbulence equation using finite difference approach for unequal grid spacing in both directions. The results shows that these parameters do influence the flow around buildings considerably. The ability of Prandtl's mixing length hypotheis in simulating conlyr.ealistic flow patterns around 2 dimensional buildings is also studied.