Urban Boundary Layers Over Dense and Tall Canopies
AbstractWind-tunnel experiments were carried out on four urban morphologies: two tall canopies with uniform height and two super-tall canopies with a large variation in element heights (where the maximum element height is more than double the average canopy height, $$h_{max}=2.5h_{avg}$$ h max = 2.5 h avg ). The average canopy height and packing density are fixed across the surfaces to $$h_{avg} = 80~\hbox {mm}$$ h avg = 80 mm , and $$\lambda _{p} = 0.44$$ λ p = 0.44 , respectively. A combination of laser Doppler anemometry and direct-drag measurements are used to calculate and scale the mean velocity profiles with the boundary-layer depth $$\delta $$ δ . In the uniform-height experiment, the high packing density results in a ‘skimming flow’ regime with very little flow penetration into the canopy. This leads to a surprisingly shallow roughness sublayer (depth $$\approx 1.15h_{avg}$$ ≈ 1.15 h avg ), and a well-defined inertial sublayer above it. In the heterogeneous-height canopies, despite the same packing density and average height, the flow features are significantly different. The height heterogeneity enhances mixing, thus encouraging deep flow penetration into the canopy. A deeper roughness sublayer is found to exist extending up to just above the tallest element height (corresponding to $$z/h_{avg} = 2.85$$ z / h avg = 2.85 ), which is found to be the dominant length scale controlling the flow behaviour. Results point toward the existence of a constant-stress layer for all surfaces considered herein despite the severity of the surface roughness ($$\delta /h_{avg} = 3 - 6.25$$ δ / h avg = 3 - 6.25 ). This contrasts with the previous literature.
