Numerical Simulation of Wind Flow Around High-Rise Buildings Having Different Aspect Ratios

Abstract: In the present era of massive urbanization there is an increase in the urban demand of structures, this coupled with the limited availability of land for construction is leading to the construction of high-rise slender structures. The design of these high-rise structures are primarily governed by the wind loads. With the advent of high computational capability and owing to the limitation of experimentation, the numerical simulation for wind flow around building has started gaining popularity. The numerical solution leads to much lower expenses for fixing of errors and gives a faster solution compared to experimentation. The current research work utilizes the open source CFD software Open FOAM and commercially available ANSYS software for numerical analysis. The research work presented in this article compares the effectiveness of the two CFD software for different aspect ratios of the high-rise buildings by comparing them with the available literature. RANS standard k-ε turbulence model is used for simulation purpose in both the software. In the simulation, constant inlet velocity of 10m/s is used. The post processed results are presented in the form of wind pressure contour plots and streamlines. The two software are found to be quite effective in prediction of the wind pressure contour plots and mean surface pressure coefficients (CP) for different faces of the buildings. The maximum and minimum wind pressure coefficients (CP, max and CP, min) are also found out for the different buildings. The two software display distinct advantages over each other in different aspects. The current study effectively utilizes stable RANS in foretelling the near-façade airflow patterns. The simulation results were able to predict the vortex formation and wake recirculation in the domain.