scholarly journals Large-Eddy Simulation of plume dispersion within various actual urban areas

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Nakayama ◽  
K. Jurcakova ◽  
H. Nagai

Abstract. Plume dispersion of hazardous materials within urban area resulting from accidental or intentional releases is of great concern to public health. Many researchers have developed local-scale atmospheric dispersion models using building-resolving computational fluid dynamics. However, an important issue is encountered when determining a reasonable domain size of the computational model in order to capture concentration distribution patterns influenced by urban surface geometries. In this study, we carried out Large-Eddy Simulations (LES) of plume dispersion within various urban areas with a wide range of obstacle density and building height variability. The difference of centerline mean and r.m.s. concentration distributions among various complex urban surface geometries becomes small for downwind distances from the point source greater than 1.0 km. From these results, it can be concluded that a length of a computational model should be at least 1.0 km from a point source.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhangquan Wu ◽  
Chun-Ho Liu

<p>More than 80% of people living in urban areas that exposed to air quality levels that exceed WHO guideline limits both indoors and outdoors. Road transport has been found to be one of major anthropogenic sources of aerosol particles and many gaseous pollutants in urban areas. Dispersion of pollutants emitted from vehicles over urban areas largely affects pedestrian-level air quality. A good understanding of pollutant transport, mixing process and removal mechanism is crucial to effectuate air quality management. In this study, turbulent dispersion of reactive pollutants in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) over hypothetical urban area in the form of an array of idealised street canyons is investigated using large-eddy simulation (LES). The irreversible ozone O3 titration oxidizes nitric oxide NO to nitrogen dioxide NO2, representing the typical anthropogenic air pollution chemistry. Nitric oxide (NO) is emitted from the ground level of the first street canyon into the urban ABL doped with ozone (O3). From the LES results, negative vertical NO flux is found at the roof level of the street canyons.  By looking into the different plume behavior and vertical flux between the inert pollutant and chemically reactive pollutant, a fundamental understanding of exchange processes of anthropogenic chemicals between an urban surface and the atmosphere is developed. </p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-86
Author(s):  
H. Nakayama ◽  
K. Jurcakova ◽  
H. Nagai

Abstract. There is a potential problem that hazardous and flammable materials are accidentally or intentionally released within populated urban areas. For the assessment of human health hazard from toxic substances, the existence of high concentration peaks in a plume should be considered. For the safety analysis of flammable gas, certain critical threshold levels should be evaluated. Therefore, in such a situation, not only average levels but also instantaneous magnitudes of concentration should be accurately predicted. In this study, we perform Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) of plume dispersion within regular arrays of cubic buildings with large obstacle densities and investigate the influence of the building arrangement on the characteristics of mean and fluctuating concentrations.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1107
Author(s):  
Akshay A. Gowardhan ◽  
Dana L. McGuffin ◽  
Donald D. Lucas ◽  
Stephanie J. Neuscamman ◽  
Otto Alvarez ◽  
...  

Fast and accurate predictions of the flow and transport of materials in urban and complex terrain areas are challenging because of the heterogeneity of buildings and land features of different shapes and sizes connected by canyons and channels, which results in complex patterns of turbulence that can enhance material concentrations in certain regions. To address this challenge, we have developed an efficient three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code called Aeolus that is based on first principles for predicting transport and dispersion of materials in complex terrain and urban areas. The model can be run in a very efficient Reynolds average Navier–Stokes (RANS) mode or a detailed large eddy simulation (LES) mode. The RANS version of Aeolus was previously validated against field data for tracer gas and radiological dispersal releases. As a part of this work, we have validated the Aeolus model in LES mode against two different sets of data: (1) turbulence quantities measured in complex terrain at Askervein Hill; and (2) wind and tracer data from the Joint Urban 2003 field campaign for urban topography. As a third set-up, we have applied Aeolus to simulate cloud rise dynamics for buoyant plumes from high-temperature explosions. For all three cases, Aeolus LES predictions compare well to observations and other models. These results indicate that Aeolus LES can be used to accurately simulate turbulent flow and transport for a wide range of applications and scales.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Ražnjević ◽  
Chiel van Heerwaarden ◽  
Bart van Stratum ◽  
Arjan Hensen ◽  
Ilona Velzeboer ◽  
...  

Abstract. This study demonstrates the ability of large-eddy simulation (LES) forced by a large-scale model to reproduce plume dispersion in an actual field campaign. Our aim is to bring together field observations taken under non-ideal conditions and LES to show that this combination can help to derive point source strengths from sparse observations. We prepared a one-day case study based on data collected near an oil well during the ROMEO campaign (ROmanian Methane Emissions from Oil and gas) that took place in October 2019. We set up our LES using boundary conditions derived from the meteorological reanalysis ERA5 and released a point source in line with the configuration in the field. The weather conditions produced by the LES show close agreement with field observations, although the observed wind field showed complex features due to the absence of synoptic forcing. In order to align the plume direction with field observations, we created a second simulation experiment with manipulated wind fields. The estimated source strengths using the LES plume agrees well with the emitted artificial tracer gas plume, indicating the suitability of LES to infer source strengths from observations under complex conditions. To further harvest the added value of LES, higher order statistical moments of the simulated plume were analysed. Here, we found good agreement with plumes from previous LES and laboratory experiments in channel flows. We derived a length scale of plume mixing from the boundary layer height, the mean wind speed and convective velocity scale. It was demonstrated that this length scale represents the distance from the source at which the predominant plume behaviour transfers from meandering dispersion to relative dispersion.


EDIS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Paez ◽  
Jason A. Smith

Biscogniauxia canker or dieback (formerly called Hypoxylon canker or dieback) is a common contributor to poor health and decay in a wide range of tree species (Balbalian & Henn 2014). This disease is caused by several species of fungi in the genus Biscogniauxia (formerly Hypoxylon). B. atropunctata or B. mediterranea are usually the species found on Quercus spp. and other hosts in Florida, affecting trees growing in many different habitats, such as forests, parks, green spaces and urban areas (McBride & Appel, 2009).  Typically, species of Biscogniauxia are opportunistic pathogens that do not affect healthy and vigorous trees; some species are more virulent than others. However, once they infect trees under stress (water stress, root disease, soil compaction, construction damage etc.) they can quickly colonize the host. Once a tree is infected and fruiting structures of the fungus are evident, the tree is not likely to survive especially if the infection is in the tree's trunk (Anderson et al., 1995).


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