A novel approach to CFD analysis of the urban environment

The local climate and the landscape are modified and altered by the construction of cities. The magnitude of the difference between influenced and noninfluenced areas by the buildings and uninfluenced area, may be fairly large at times and it depends from many factors: weather conditions, urban thermo-physical and geometrical characteristics, anthropogenic moisture and heat sources in the area. Great problems in the assessment of urban climatology are due to heterogeneity, especially in land-cover and canopy structure and so many problems are due to the design of cities. The objective of this study is to identify the key urban design variables that influence the environment area surrounding the buildings, and evenly to obtain information or guidelines that allows to evaluate the influence area on the urban territory. 2D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulations have been performed, varying alternately geometric parameters and environmental conditions. A parametric study, by varying: height of the buildings, temperature difference between undisturbed air and building’s walls, velocity of undisturbed air, has been conducted. Results obtained allowed to find a novel approach to study urban canopies, giving a qualitative assessment on the contribution and definition of total energy of the area surrounding the buildings.