Assessing the vegetation canopy influences on wind flow using wind tunnel experiments with artificial plants

Abstract

Wind erosion causes serious problems and considerable threat in most regions of the world. Vegetation on the ground has an important role in controlling wind erosion by covering soil surface and absorbingwind momentum. A set of wind tunnel experiments was performed to quantitatively examine the effect of canopy structure on wind movement. Artificial plastic vegetations with different porosity and canopyshape were introduced as the model canopy. Normalized roughness length (Z0/H) and shear velocity ratio (R) were analyzed as a function of roughness density (λ). Experiments showed that Z0/H increasesand R decreases as λ reaches a maximum value, λmax, while the values of Z0/H and R showed little change with λ value beyond as λmax.