Evaluation of wind comfort with computational fluid dynamics simulations for pedestrian sidewalks around buildings

Abstract

Wind power could be one of the most clean and powerful renewable resources for electrical energy production, but on the other hand, uncontrolled wind flow especially in urban places could cause undesired situations as damage to buildings, decrease in pedestrian comfort, environmental damage, or even life loss. Construction of high-rise buildings, widely spread structures within cities, and environmental changes forces, engineers to find quick, reliable, and also economically viable solutions during design stages, but wind comfort of sidewalks generally not considered enough even if they are located in crowded areas. The web-based computer aided engineering (CAE) program named Simscale which runs on the basis of sophisticated graphical interface was used as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to determine wind speeds under influence of buildings in the Nuh Naci Yazgan University campus. Also, field measurements carried out in campus area for a short term period were compared with long term hourly wind speed data obtained from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM) station located in Kayseri to identify most optimal wind speed data for the research area. Results of analysis showed that wind speed increased in the mostly used paths of campus, which means that the layout of buildings negatively affected the wind comfort. CFD analysis softwares could be used to determine the possible consquences of wind with less economic investment in a short time, and they could be used in accordance with comfort criterias as well as safety regulations.