Wind Pressure Distributions on Buildings Using the Coherent Structure Smagorinsky Model for LES

A subgrid-scale model based on coherent structures, called the Coherent Structure Smagorinsky Model (CSM), has been applied to a large eddy simulation to assess its performance in the prediction of wind pressure distributions on buildings. The study cases were carried out for the assessment of an isolated rectangular high-rise building and a building with a setback (both in a uniform flow) and an actual high-rise building in an urban city with turbulent boundary layer flow. For the isolated rectangular high-rise building in uniform flow, the CSM showed good agreement with both the traditional Smagorinsky Model (SM) and the experiments (values within 20%). For the building with a setback as well as the actual high-rise building in an urban city, both of which have a distinctive wind pressure distribution with large negative pressure caused by the complicated flow due to the strong influence of neighboring buildings, the CSM effectively gives more accurate results with less variation than the SM in comparison with the experimental results (within 20%). The CSM also yielded consistent peak pressure coefficients for all wind directions, within 20% of experimental values in a relatively high-pressure region of the case study of the actual high-rise building in an urban city.