Numerical simulation analysis of wind field above pavement surface in different landforms by computational fluid dynamics approach

Abstract

The temperature and moisture of the pavement structure can be greatly influenced by the wind speed above pavement surface. The wind speed above pavement surface not only is dominated by the wind speed of atmosphere, but also it is highly related to the landform and buildings around road. However, currently there are no studies about the wind field above pavement surface in consideration of the effect of the landform and buildings. A simulation method, which is combined with geographic information system (GIS), wind data from meteorological observatory and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, is employed to study the effect of the landform and the wind speed of atmosphere on the wind field above pavement surface. Three cases are studied, including an urban road, a coastal road and a mountainous road. Furthermore, the wind field distribution above road surface in different wind directions was studied in our work. Results indicate that the wind field above pavement surface can be greatly affected by the landforms, buildings and wind direction. This simulation method can provide reliable results for the wind field above pavement surface. The maximum relative errors between simulated and measured wind speed can be less than 20% in the analysis of the three cases. It is recommended that the CFD simulation method is a good tool to accurately know the wind field above pavement surface.