A numerical analysis of pollutant dispersion in street canyon: influence of the turbulent Schmidt number

Abstract

Realizing the growing importance and availability of motor vehicles, we observe that the main source of pollution in the street canyons comes from the dispersion of automobile engine exhaust gas. It represents a substantial effect on the micro-climate conditions in urban areas. Seven idealized-2D building configurations are investigated by numerical simulations. The turbulent Schmidt number is introduced in the pollutant transport equation in order the take into account the proportion between the rate of momentum turbulent transport and the mass turbulent transport by diffusion. In the present paper, we attempt to approach the experimental test results by adjusting the values of turbulent Schmidt number to its corresponding application. It was with interest that we established this link for achieving our objectives, since the numerical results agree well with the experimental ones. The CFD code ANSYS CFX, the k, e and the RNGk-e models of turbulence have been adopted for the resolutions. From the simulation results, the turbulent Schmidt number is a range of 0.1 to 1.3 that has some effect on the prediction of pollutant dispersion in the street canyons. In the case of a flat roof canyon configuration (case: runa000), appropriate turbulent Schmidt number of 0.6 is estimated using the k-epsilon model and of 0.5 using the RNG k-e model.

Keywords

• pollutant dispersion
• urban street canyons
• build configurations
• CFD simulation
• turbulent Schmidt number