Showing papers by "Silvana Di Sabatino published in 2017"

Developing a Research Strategy to Better Understand, Observe, and Simulate Urban Atmospheric Processes at Kilometer to Subkilometer Scales

Abstract: A Met Office/Natural Environment Research Council Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme workshop brought together 50 key international scientists from the UK and international community to formulate the key requirements for an Urban Meteorological Research strategy. The workshop was jointly organised by University of Reading and the Met Office.

Direct measurements of the drag force over aligned arrays of cubes exposed to boundary-layer flows

Abstract: Wind tunnel measurements of the total drag force for aligned arrays of cubes exposed to two different boundary-layer flows at three flow velocities are discussed. The drag force for eight different building packing densities λ p (from 0.028 to 1) is measured with a standard load cell generating a novel dataset. Different λ p are reproduced by increasing the number of buildings on the same lot area; this represents a real situation that an urban planner is faced with when a lot area of a given (fixed) size is allocated to the development of new built areas. It is assumed that the surrounding terrain is uniform and there is a transition from a given roughness (smooth) to a new roughness (rough). The approaching flow will adjust itself over the new surface within a distance that in general may be larger than the horizontal length covered by the array. We investigate the region where the flow adjustment occurs. The wide range of packing densities allowed us to analyse in detail the evolution of the drag force. The drag force increases with increasing packing densities until it reaches a maximum at an intermediate packing density (λ p = 0.25 in our case) followed by a slight decrease at larger packing densities. The value of the drag force depends on the flow adjustment along the array which is evaluated by introducing the parameter “drag area” to retrieve information about the drag distribution at different λ p . Results clearly suggest a change of the distribution of the drag force, which is found to be relatively uniform at low packing densities, while most of the force acts on first rows of the arrays at large packing densities. The drag area constitutes the basis for the formulation of a new adjustment length scale defined as the ratio between the volume of the air within the array and the drag area. The proposed adjustment length scale automatically takes into account the change in drag distribution along the array for a better parameterization of urban effects in dispersion models.

Analysis of the internal boundary layer formation on tropical coastal regions using SODAR data in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Abstract: This paper investigates local circulation features in the industrialised coastal region of Santa Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A better understanding of local circulation affects directly the choice of suitable dispersion models and/or development of new ones to plan mitigation strategies to reduce air pollution in the area. The topographic characteristics and the variety of atmospheric phenomena acting over the area suggest the formation of internal boundary layers (IBLs) during cold front and bay breeze flows with direction upstream of the major industries. Vertical profiles of main meteorological variables are evaluated together with surface weather stations and satellite data to derive a detailed physics-based description of the various stages of bay breeze in terms of the main forces, duration, and atmospheric stabilities. It is found that the development phase of the sea breeze coincides with the largest bay/land differences and, consequently, it is the most pronounced condition to observe the IBL formation.

Cfd characterization of street canyon heating by solar radiation on building walls

Abstract: Heat exchange processes between building walls and external air within street canyons is an important topic in air quality modelling considering that the thermal fields largely affect local flow dynamics and pollutant concentration distribution. Despite the abundance of numerical studies, many questions still remain unanswered, ultimately limiting the inclusion of heat effects in mesocale atmospheric models. Of interest in this study is the assessment of radiative processes at building walls in terms of emissivity (i.e. is the ratio of the thermal radiation from a surface to the radiation from an ideal black surface at the same temperature), shape factors (i.e. the proportion of the radiation which leaves the surface of a building and strikes toward the surface of another building) and their relation to the Richardson number. The study is approached via the computational fluid dynamics code OpenFOAM, with large eddy simulations (LES) extension to model turbulence within the canyon and Boussinesq approach to model heat transfer. Consequences on pollutant concentrations are also analysed. A model for setting the thermal boundary conditions on the building surfaces is developed, based on a database that gives the correlations between the emissivity of a surface and the heat flux emitted by this surface, under certain weather conditions, as a function of the latitude and longitude of the surface, the orientation, the time of the day. As a novel result an exponential law between the transfer coefficient and Ri (as well as with the emissivity) is proposed as a function of the canyon aspect ratio.