Three-dimensional primitive prediction with building embedded Swin Transformer for urban turbulence

Large-eddy simulation (LES) is the benchmark for resolving canonical urban canopy physics critical for pedestrian comfort, pollutant dispersion modeling, and Urban Air Mobility operations. However, generating long-horizon LES data requires prohibitively long simulation times, making it impractical for real-time or large-scale applications. To overcome these limitations, we develop 3DSwinUrbanNet, a three-dimensional (3D) Swin-Transformer-based model that directly predicts the full primitive variables (u,v,w,p) using time steps orders of magnitude larger than those in the computational fluid dynamics solver (Δt=1 min vs LES Δt=0.05 s). 3D building geometry embeddings are integrated into the encoder, backbone, and decoder via average-pooling over patches and linear projection into the latent space. Model accuracy is evaluated using time-averaged fields, wall-normal profiles, turbulence statistics, and scale-resolved diagnostics (probability density functions and energy spectra). This approach yields a 1984× speedup (2.58 s vs LES 5120 s for 20 min forecasting) without precursor overhead, enabling real-time predictions on a single Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme 4090 graphic processing unit.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physics of Fluids
Published
2026-04-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0324405
Primary Topic
Wind and Air Flow Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Three-dimensional primitive prediction with building embedded Swin Transformer for urban turbulence

Panagiotis Tsiotras, Sang Lee, Haechan Kim
Physics of Fluids
Wind and Air Flow Studies
article

Three-dimensional primitive prediction with building embedded Swin Transformer for urban turbulence

Panagiotis Tsiotras, Sang Lee, Haechan Kim
article en

Abstract

Large-eddy simulation (LES) is the benchmark for resolving canonical urban canopy physics critical for pedestrian comfort, pollutant dispersion modeling, and Urban Air Mobility operations. However, generating long-horizon LES data requires prohibitively long simulation times, making it impractical for real-time or large-scale applications. To overcome these limitations, we develop 3DSwinUrbanNet, a three-dimensional (3D) Swin-Transformer-based model that directly predicts the full primitive variables (u,v,w,p) using time steps orders of magnitude larger than those in the computational fluid dynamics solver (Δt=1 min vs LES Δt=0.05 s). 3D building geometry embeddings are integrated into the encoder, backbone, and decoder via average-pooling over patches and linear projection into the latent space. Model accuracy is evaluated using time-averaged fields, wall-normal profiles, turbulence statistics, and scale-resolved diagnostics (probability density functions and energy spectra). This approach yields a 1984× speedup (2.58 s vs LES 5120 s for 20 min forecasting) without precursor overhead, enabling real-time predictions on a single Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme 4090 graphic processing unit.

Physics of FluidsVol. 38(4)
Georgia Institute of Technology (US), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KR)
Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement
Sustainable cities and communities
Openalex Percentile: Top 17%
Wind and Air Flow Studies
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