Modeling Wind Flow and Particulate Pollutant Dispersion Around a Realistic Model of a Building Using Large-Eddy Simulation

Urban air pollution has been of concern due to its adverse effect on human health. A major portion of urban air pollution is attributed to vehicle emissions. Center of Excellence (CoE) Building was built in Syracuse NY at the intersection of two major highways. The building is fully instrumented for assessing outdoor and indoor air pollutions. In this study the airflow and the dispersion of particulate air pollutants emitted from the highways surrounding the CoE building were analyzed. The wind flow around the model of the CoE building was first simulated using the RANS model. Comparison of the numerical simulations with the available PIV experimental data showed that the RANS turbulence model was not able to capture all features of the flow field due to the complexity of the building’s geometry. While the pressure field on the walls of the building model matched with those measured by the pressure taps, some aspects of the airflow velocity profile were not in agreement with the PIV data. The computational modeling of the wind flow around the building was then performed using the Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) approach. The mean velocity magnitude predicted by the LES showed good agreement with the experimental PIV measurements. The simulated flow field was used to predict the dispersion of the particulate pollutant around the building and the deposition fraction of particles on the walls of the building is studied.