Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers
Dense urban areas restrict air movement, causing airflow in urban street canyons to be much lower than the flow above buildings. Boosting near-ground wind speed can enhance thermal comfort in warm climates by increasing skin convective heat transfer. We explored the potential of a wind catcher to di...
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| Format: | Article |
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MDPI AG
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112110 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2225-1057 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5631-7256 |
| _version_ | 1811069374960762880 |
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| author | Nazarian, Negin Chew, Lup Wai Norford, Leslie Keith |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture Nazarian, Negin Chew, Lup Wai Norford, Leslie Keith |
| author_sort | Nazarian, Negin |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Dense urban areas restrict air movement, causing airflow in urban street canyons to be much lower than the flow above buildings. Boosting near-ground wind speed can enhance thermal comfort in warm climates by increasing skin convective heat transfer. We explored the potential of a wind catcher to direct atmospheric wind into urban street canyons. We arranged scaled-down models of buildings with a wind catcher prototype in a water channel to simulate flow across two-dimensional urban street canyons. Velocity profiles were measured with Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters. Experiments showed that a wind catcher enhances pedestrian-level wind speed in the target canyon by 2.5 times. The flow enhancement is local to the target canyon with little effect in other canyons. With reversed flow direction, a “reversed wind catcher” has no effect in the target canyon but reduces the flow in the immediate downstream canyon. The reversed wind catcher exhibits a similar blockage effect of a tall building amid an array of lower buildings. Next, we validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of all cases with experiments and extended the study to reveal impacts on three-dimensional ensembles of buildings. A wind catcher with closed sidewalls enhances maximum pedestrian-level wind speed in three-dimensional canyons by four times. Our results encourage better designs of wind catchers to increase wind speed in targeted areas. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:10:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/112110 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:10:00Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1121102022-09-23T11:21:07Z Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers Nazarian, Negin Chew, Lup Wai Norford, Leslie Keith Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Chew, Lup Wai Norford, Leslie Keith Dense urban areas restrict air movement, causing airflow in urban street canyons to be much lower than the flow above buildings. Boosting near-ground wind speed can enhance thermal comfort in warm climates by increasing skin convective heat transfer. We explored the potential of a wind catcher to direct atmospheric wind into urban street canyons. We arranged scaled-down models of buildings with a wind catcher prototype in a water channel to simulate flow across two-dimensional urban street canyons. Velocity profiles were measured with Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters. Experiments showed that a wind catcher enhances pedestrian-level wind speed in the target canyon by 2.5 times. The flow enhancement is local to the target canyon with little effect in other canyons. With reversed flow direction, a “reversed wind catcher” has no effect in the target canyon but reduces the flow in the immediate downstream canyon. The reversed wind catcher exhibits a similar blockage effect of a tall building amid an array of lower buildings. Next, we validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations of all cases with experiments and extended the study to reveal impacts on three-dimensional ensembles of buildings. A wind catcher with closed sidewalls enhances maximum pedestrian-level wind speed in three-dimensional canyons by four times. Our results encourage better designs of wind catchers to increase wind speed in targeted areas. 2017-11-01T17:09:27Z 2017-11-01T17:09:27Z 2017-08 2017-07 2017-10-25T15:58:37Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2073-4433 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112110 Chew, Lup et al. "Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers." Atmosphere, 8, 9 (August 2017): 159 © 2017 The Authors https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2225-1057 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5631-7256 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos8090159 Atmosphere Creative Commons Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf MDPI AG Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| spellingShingle | Nazarian, Negin Chew, Lup Wai Norford, Leslie Keith Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title | Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title_full | Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title_fullStr | Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title_full_unstemmed | Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title_short | Pedestrian-Level Urban Wind Flow Enhancement with Wind Catchers |
| title_sort | pedestrian level urban wind flow enhancement with wind catchers |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112110 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2225-1057 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5631-7256 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT nazariannegin pedestrianlevelurbanwindflowenhancementwithwindcatchers AT chewlupwai pedestrianlevelurbanwindflowenhancementwithwindcatchers AT norfordlesliekeith pedestrianlevelurbanwindflowenhancementwithwindcatchers |