The effect of urban obstacles on the flow distribution at pedestrian area

• Main Authors: IOP, Kasim, HA (Author), Khalid, AH (Author), Mohamad, MF (Author), Pahroraji, HF (Author), Razak, AA (Author), Sobri, A (Author), Zainol, MA (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 The pedestrian level is an important area where most of the human activities occur in this area such as walking, reading, and cycling. Along with the pedestrian activities, there are small street shops are builds and presences of the vehicle at the street canyon where people park their cars in this area. This study aims to investigate the effect of the presence of obstacles such as vehicles at the street canyon on wind flow structure and ventilation performance. A computational simulation study is carried out to analyze the contribution of obstacles to pedestrian ventilation performance. A steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equation with the realizable standard k-epsilon model is used as a turbulence solver. The result showed presences of obstacle at a pedestrian level will effect on wind flow structure where the flow becomes more chaotic compared with no presences of obstacles at a pedestrian level. Furthermore, the air change rate (ACH) is reducing as the number of obstacles increase thus will affect the ventilation performance at the pedestrian area. The presences of an obstacle such as vehicle and street shops will contribute to the wind flow structure and ventilation performable at pedestrians' level.