A numerical study of wind flow around the TTU building and the roof corner vortex

Comprehensive studies on wind how around the TTU (Texas Tech University) building were conducted in both field test and wind-tunnel modeling. The results are very useful benchmark database for computational wind engineering studies. Therefore, a number of numerical studies have been carried out since then to explore a deeper insight into the physical nature of the how characteristics. However, the previous numerical studies have not reported much about the results on the roof corner vortex, which is believed to be very important in engineering applications. This paper presents a recent numerical study of wind how around the TTU building using an advanced CFD method with large eddy simulation approach. The main focus of this paper is the roof corner vortex. Two approaching wind directions (215 degrees and 225 degrees) to the building were investigated with three mesh systems. The three-dimensional roof corner vortex pattern is successfully simulated. The mean values are generally in good agreement with the wind tunnel modeling and field test, but the rms values are not comparable since the numerical results only include the resolvable part due to the large-scale eddies while the small-scale eddies are modeled by SGS model and not included in the comparison. However, as the mesh system is made finer, the rms values are closer to the measured data since more smaller scale eddies are directly resolved.