The application of computational fluid dynamics to pedestrian level wind safety problem induced by high-rise buildings

In this paper, the pedestrian level wind safety problem induced by high-rise buildings has been studied using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes Fluent. The verification by use of wind tunnel data shows that Fluent can fairly reproduce the flow field in the areas adjacent to the structure when a realizable k-epsilon turbulence model is adopted in calculations. The results of the numerical simulations including seven cases show that the existence of high-rise buildings does increase the wind hazard probability at the pedestrian level; furthermore, the wind direction, the geometric size of structures and the layout of structures can obviously affect the pedestrian level wind environment. However, trees on the pavement do not contribute much in reducing the wind hazard probability.