Turbulent ventilation of a street canyon

Abstract

A selection of turbulence data corresponding to 185 days of field measurements has been analysed. The non-ideal building geometry influenced the circulation patterns in the street canyon and the largest average vertical velocities were observed in the wake of an unbroken line of buildings. The standard deviation of vertical velocity fluctuations normalised by the ambient wind speed was relatively insensitive to ambient wind direction and sensor position, and it was usually larger than the corresponding 1-hour average velocity. Cross-correlations of spatially separated velocity measurements were small, and this suggests that most of the velocity fluctuations were fairly local and not caused by unsteady street vortices. The observed velocities scaled with the ambient wind speed except under low-wind conditions.