APPLICATIONS OF AERODYNAMICS IN THE ARCHITECTURAL WIND ENVIRONMENT------SIMULATION STUDIES OF WIND ENVIRONMENT I

Architectural wind environment study is a crossdiscipline between aerodynamics and atmospheric science focusing on theinteraction of architectures with the urban wind fields. In the study, windtunnel tests and flow visualization approaches, as consistently used inaerodynamics, are applied for the investigation of the wind field distributionand variation in urban atmospheric boundary layers and around thearchitectures. The numerical computations andwind tunnel tests are mutually complementary and their combination canimprove the experimental studies.In the present paper, the wind environment of Beijing Central BusinessDistrict (CBD) is studied. The simulation of the urban atmospheric boundarylayer in the wind tunnel and the method of the wind field visualization aroundarchitectures are described in detail. The experimental results are comparedwith numerical computations and they are in agreement. Some useful suggestions inthe study are made for the improvement of urban planning and urbanwind environment in CBD area.