Flow and Pollutant Dispersion Model in a 2D Urban Street Canyons Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Ph.D., Research Assistant, Heat Island Group, Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Abstract

A two-dimensional model is used to simulate temperature distribution, wind speed and pollutants dispersion within an isolated two-dimensional street canyon using SIMPLE algorithm in ANSYS Fluent version 16.2. The simulation is based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations coupled with a series of standard, RNG and realizable k-ε turbulence models. Simulation domain consisted of a street canyon with two buildings enclosing a street with the aspect ratio of 1. The wind is assumed to be perpendicular to the direction of the street and the source of the pollution is assumed to be liner. The results showed that the RNG k-ε turbulence model is the most optimum model by comparing with the calculated data under different wind speed patterns and pollutant dispersion model. The improvement of turbulent viscosity term of the RNG k-ε turbulence model provides a more accurate and reliable numerical solution for the present study regarding to the pollution dispersion in a street canyon. The simulation results also showed that the dimensionless pollutant concentrations, P, is larger on the leeward side of the buildings and decrease exponentially from floor to top of the upstream buildings. Furthermore, the results showed that the pollutant concentrations on the leeward side of building are more than that on the windward side due to the pollutant transportation of vortex circulation.

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