Modifications to RANS Turbulence Model for Use in Urban Wind Resource Assessment

Abstract

A new turbulence model, MW, is developed for use in the computational flow over an urban landscape. It addresses the stagnation-point anomaly found in simulations over buildings with the standard k-ϵ and negates the introduction of negative normal stresses which come about in the presence of large mean strain rates. MW was tested for a flow over a building and it performed better than the models of Yap and Durbin. It was also able to predict a larger recirculation region at the lee of a steep hill which is an improvement to the standard k-ϵ.