Numerical investigations of flow and passive pollutant exposure in high-rise deep street canyons with various street aspect ratios and viaduct settings

Vehicular pollutant exposure of residents and pedestrians in high-rise deep street canyons with viaducts and noise barriers requires special concerns because the ventilation capacity is weak and the literature reported inconsistent findings on flow patterns as aspect ratios (building height/street width, H/W) are larger than 2. By conducting computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations coupled with the intake fraction iFand the daily pollutant exposure Et, this paper investigates the impact of street aspect ratios, viaducts and noise barriers on the flow and vehicular passive pollutant exposure in full-scale street canyons (H/W = 1-6, W = 24 m). iF represents the fraction of total emissions inhaled by a population (1 ppm=10(-6)), while Et means the extent of human beings' contact with pollutants within one day. CFD methodologies of passive pollutant dispersion modeling are successfully validated by wind tunnel data in Meroney et al. (1996). As a novelty, the two-main-vortex pattern start appearing in full-scale street canyons as H/W changes from 4 to 5, however previous studies using wind-tunnel-scale models (H = 6cm) reported two to five vortexes as H/W = 25. This finding is validated by both smoke visualization in scale-model outdoor field experiments (H = 1.2m, W = 0.6m) and CFD simulations of Reynolds number independence. Cases with two main vortexes (H/W = 5-6) experience much larger daily pollutant exposure (similar to 10(3)-10(4) mg/m(3)/day) than those with single main vortex as H/W = 1-4 (similar to 10(1)-10(2) mg/m(3)/day). Moreover leeward-side pollutant exposures are much larger than windward-side as H/W = 1-4 while oppositely as H/W = 5-6. Assuming a general population density, the total iF is 485-803 ppm as H/W = 1, 2020-12051 ppm as H/W = 2-4, and 51112-794026 ppm as H/W = 56. With a single elevated pollutant source, cases with viaducts experience significantly smaller pollutant exposures than cases without viaducts. Road barriers slightly increase pollutant exposure in near-road buildings with H/W=1 while reduce a little as H/W = 3 and 5. Two-source cases can experience 2.60-5.52 times pollutant exposure as great as single-source cases. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.