Study on Effects of Building Morphology on Urban Boundary Layer Using an Urban Canopy Model

An urban canopy model is incorporated into the Nanjing University Regional Boundary Layer Model. Temperature simulated by the urban canopy model is in better agreement with the observation, especially in the night time, than that simulated by the traditional slab model. The coupled model is used to study the effects of building morphology on urban boundary layer and meteorological environment by changing urban area, building height, and building density. It is found that when the urban area is expanded, the urban boundary layer heat flux, thermal turbu- lence, and the turbulent momentum flux and kinetic energy all increase or enhance, causing the surface air temperature to rise up. The stability of urban atmospheric stratification is affected to different extent at different times of the day. When the building height goes up, the aerodynamic roughness height, zero plane displacement height of urban area, and ratio of building height to street width all increase. Therefore, the increase in building height results in the decrease of the surface heat flux, urban surface temperature, mean wind speed, and turbulent kinetic energy in daytime. While at night, as more heat storage is released by higher buildings, thermal turbulence is more active and surface heat flux increases, leading to a higher urban temperature. As the building density increases, the aerodynamic roughness height of urban area decreases, and the effect of urban canopy on radiation strengthens. The increase of building density results in the decrease in urban surface heat flux, momentum flux, and air temperature, the increase in mean wind speed, and the weakening of turbulence in the daytime. While at night, the urban temperature increases due to the release of more heat storage.

Improving outdoor air quality based on building morphology:Numerical investigation

Due to rapid urbanization around the world,high concentrations of vehicular pollutants have deteriorated the outdoor air quality,which can affect the physical and psychological well-being of humans.Numerous strategies have been proposed to overcome these harmful impacts by improving the dispersion of air pollutants.Consequently,a question arises regarding the potential effects of building morphology on the dispersion of pollutants.Subsequently,transient three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics(CFD)simulations are performed to examine the effect of building morphology on PM10 dispersion.Eleven cases with various prototypes and morphological methods are compared with a simple building form to identify the patterns of PM10 dispersion within a given time sequence under a prevailing inflow condition.The results indicate that the different designs of building morphology with varying Relative compactness(RC)indicator highlight the importance of considering morphological factors to improve outdoor air quality.In addition,the proposed prototypes can reduce PM10 concentrations by approximately 30%e90%at specific points in the studied time sequence.In particular,the vertical,horizontal,and grid folded prototypes can be considered more effective as an approximate decrease between 70%and 90%in PM10 concentrations is observed,which reflects the influence of building morphology on improving outdoor air quality.

Building Morphological Characteristics and Their Effect on the Wind in Beijing

An urban boundary layer model （UBLM） is improved by incorporating the effect of buildings with a sectional drag coefficient and a height-distributed canopy drag length scale. The improved UBLM is applied to simulate the wind fields over three typical urban blocks over the Beijing area with different height-towidth ratios. For comparisons, the wind fields over the same blocks are simulated by an urban sub-domain scale model resolving the buildings explicitly. The wind fields simulated from the two different methods are in good agreement. Then, two-dimensional building morphological characteristics and urban canopy parameters for Beijing are derived from detailed building height data. Finally, experiements are conducted to investigate the effect of buildings on the wind field in Beijing using the improved UBLM.