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A model of a cattle barn and a part-depth atmospheric boundary layer were scaled down to 1:50 to simulate the natural ventilation in a wind tunnel. We studied the impact of three opening configurations (entirely, half and quarterly open, which represented 0.7, 0.35 and 0.17 wall porosity, respectively), on the mean flow and the stability of the flow structures in the barn using time-resolved PIV technique and oscillating pattern decomposition method (OPD). While we observed the most-energy-containing structures (POD modes) in the case of the half opening, the most stable structures (OPD modes) correspond to the fully open case. We found that the stability of the structures increases with the opening width (wall porosity), and the highest frequency of these structures was 11 Hz.

As most of the world’s population lives in cities, it is critical to understand dispersion processes of pollutants in urban areas. This study focuses on so called air exchange rate (ACH) index, which is frequently used by numerical studies to determine ventilation of street canyons without a simulation of a pollution source. These studies applied the ACH on idealised 2D street canyons, where the ventilation acts only through the one opening roof top. There are two pertinent questions: i) is the ACH really capable to predict the ventilation of a street canyon without knowing of a pollutant source; and ii) how much the ACH differs between 2D and 3D street canyons? To answer these questions, we performed large-eddy simulations of pollution of complex 3D street canyons from ground-level line sources. We computed ACHs and spatially-average concentrations for three different street canyons and compared these quantities with those from previous studies. Results clearly demonstrate that these quantities strongly depend not only on street-canyon geometry but also on geometry of surrounding buildings. It is also shown that 2D canyon gives unrealistic result for retention of pollutant within an urban street canyon. The ACH might lead to significant underestimation of the street-canyon ventilation if a source would be outside the canyon.

Owing to the spatial variability of an urban area, even the transport of passive scalar is complex. The examination of the pollutant transport in such turbulent flow as occur within the urban canopy requires the measurements not only the advective but also the turbulent part of this transport. However, recent measurement techniques for the turbulent transport have their limitations. In particular, these measurements are very demanding if one needs to analyze the ventilation processes of the street through the entire streetcanyon openings and which needs to be performed also in the positions where the handling with the measurement instruments might comprise a complex issue or is even impossible. Thus we present a comparison of two methods for the assessment of turbulent and advective pollution fluxes through the lateral openings of two different street canyons with respect to the wind direction and the roof-height nonuniformity to evaluate the importance of the measurement of these fluxes nearby the street-canyon walls. Both of them are based on the simultaneous point measurement of concentration and lateral velocity component and the interpolation between the last measured point and the street-canyon borders, but in the second method the measured area is extended from 77% to 84% of the total area of the lateral openings.

Wavelet analysis is applied to data from PIV measurement in order to recognize a specific structure in the flow. The PIV snaphots achieved on the model of the street canyon was used as a test case. Four flow characteristics that are at disposal from one-point simultaneous two-components measurement (e.g. from 2D LDA) were analyzed by Wavelet method: longitudinal and vertical velocity, momentum flux u’w’ and δS – the difference between momentum fluxes associated with a sweep and an ejection. Each of characteristic is useful for detection of certain type of event. We have focused on the sweep and the ejection that seem to be the most convenient for investigation of a significant inflow or an outflow from the street canyon.

Previous study concerned of qualitative modelling neutrally stratified flow over open-cut coal mine and important surrounding topography at meso-scale (1:9000) revealed an important area for quantitative modelling of atmospheric dispersion at small-scale (1:3300). The selected area includes a necessary part of the coal mine topography with respect to its future expansion and surrounding populated areas. At this small-scale simultaneous measurement of velocity components and concentrations in specified points of vertical and horizontal planes were performed by two-dimensional Laser Doppler Anemometry (LDA) and Fast-Response Flame Ionization Detector (FFID), respectively. The impact of the complex terrain on passive pollutant dispersion with respect to the prevailing wind direction was observed and the prediction of the air quality at populated areas is discussed. The measured data will be used for comparison with another model taking into account the future coal mine transformation. Thus, the impact of coal mine transformation on pollutant dispersion can be observed.

In order to estimate the ventilation of vehicle pollution within street canyons, a wind tunnel experiment and a large eddy simulation (LES) was performed. A model of an idealised urban area with apartment houses arranged to courtyards was designed according to common Central European cities. In the wind tunnel, we assembled a set-up for simultaneous measurement of vertical velocity and tracer gas concentration. Due to the vehicle traffic emissions modelling, a new line source of tracer gas was designed and built into the model. As a computational model, the LES model solving the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations was used. In this paper, we focused on the street canyon with the line source situated perpendicular to an approach flow. Vertical and longitudinal velocity components of the flow with the pollutant concentration were obtained from two horizontal grids placed in different heights above the street canyon. Vertical advective and turbulent pollution fluxes were computed from the measured data as ventilation characteristics. Wind tunnel and LES data were qualitatively compared. A domination of advective pollution transport within the street canyon was determined. However, the turbulent transport with an opposite direction to the advective played a significant role within and above the street canyon.

Conurbations all over the world have enlarged for numberless years. The accidental or intentional releases of gases become more frequent. Therefore, these crises situations have to be studied. The aim of this paper is to describe experiments examining these processes that were carried out in the laboratory of Environmental Aerodynamics of the Institute of Thermomechanics AS CR in Nový Knin. Results show huge puff variability from replica to replica.

The objective of this case study was to determine the influence of the coal mine cavity and its vicinity on the main flow field with respect to prevailing wind direction. In order to model the neutrally stratified flow over extremely huge open-cut coal mine Libous situated at north-west of Czech Republic the laminar flow analogy was applied. The model was scaled down to 1:9000 according to dimensions of wind-tunnel and selected coal mine surroundings. The measurements of longitudinal and lateral velocity components in selected vertical, resp. horizontal planes were performed by LDA. The measured data will be used for validation of CFD simulation and for selections of area of interest at bigger scales where turbulent flow modelling will be performed. The results revealed that not only of cavity shape and deepness but also the surroundings orography has influence on flow pattern, hence on ventilation, within the area of interest.

Chemical attacks (e.g. Syria 2014-15 chlorine, 2013 sarine or Iraq 2006-7 chlorine) as well as chemical plant disasters (e.g. Spain 2015 nitric oxide, ferric chloride; Texas 2014 methyl mercaptan) threaten mankind. In these crisis situations, gas clouds are released. Dispersion of gas clouds is the issue of interest investigated in this paper. The paper describes wind tunnel experiments of dispersion from ground level point gas source. The source is situated in a model of an idealised urban canopy. The short duration releases of passive contaminant ethane are created by an electromagnetic valve. The gas cloud concentrations are measured in individual places at the height of the human breathing zone within a street parallel with flow direction by Fast-response Ionisation Detector. The simulations of the gas release for each measurement position are repeated many times under the same experimental set up to obtain representative datasets. These datasets are analysed to compute puff characteristics (arrival, leaving time and duration). The results indicate that the mean value of the dimensionless arrival time can be described as a growing linear function of the dimensionless coordinate in the street parallel with flow direction where the gas source is situated. The same might be stated about the dimensionless leaving time as well as the dimensionless duration, however these fits are worse. Utilising a linear function, we might also estimate some other statistical characteristics from datasets than the datasets means (medians, trimeans). The datasets of the dimensionless arrival time, the dimensionless leaving time and the dimensionless duration can be fitted by the generalized extreme value distribution (GEV) in all sampling positions except one.

The objective of this experimental study is to determine processes of a vertical turbulent pollution transport above the X-shaped street intersection in an idealised symmetric urban area for several approach flow directions. An experimental set-up for simultaneous measurement of the flow velocity and the tracer gas concentration in a high temporal resolution is assembled. Vertical turbulent scalar fluxes are computed from the measured data in a horizontal plane above the street intersection. The quadrant analysis was applied to the vertical turbulent pollution fluxes data. Events with dominant contribution to vertical turbulent pollution flux were detected. The mean duration, repetition frequency and the duration percentage were computed for these events. A strong influence of the approach flow direction on the the type of dominant events and their characteristics was resolved.