Impact of building facade geometrical details on pollutant dispersion in street canyons

The present study investigates the impact of building facade geometrical details on the pollutant transport mechanism in long street canyons. Large-eddy simulations (LES), extensively validated with experiments, are performed for four cases: (i) street canyon without facade balconies, (ii) street canyon with balconies at both windward and leeward facades, (ii) street canyon with balconies only at the windward facade and (iv) street canyon with balconies only at the leeward facade. The results show that the building balconies can strongly affect the wind flow field and pollutant dispersion in long street canyons. The most significant impact is observed for the two street canyon cases with balconies at the windward facade, which strongly obstruct the airflow from penetrating deep into the bottom of the canyon. The presence of balconies only at the windward facade and at both facades can increase the area-weighted mean pollutant concentration in the vertical center plane inside the canyon by 80% and 106%, respectively, and reduce the mean pollutant exchange velocity (U-e) by 46% and 54%, respectively. The analysis of the vertical mean convective and turbulent mass fluxes indicates that the presence of balconies mainly decreases the convective contribution to U-e, while the impact on the turbulent contribution is smaller.

Automated summary

This study investigates the impact of building facade geometrical details on the pollutant transport mechanism in long street canyons. The results show that building balconies can strongly affect the wind flow field and pollutant dispersion. The presence of balconies decreases the convective contribution to pollutant exchange in long street canyons.