On the Effects of Lateral Openings on Courtyard Ventilation and Pollution—A Large-Eddy Simulation Study
Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Leibniz University Hannover, 30419 Hannover, Germany
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
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These authors contributed equally to this work.
Atmosphere 2019, 10(2), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10020063
Received: 22 January 2019
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Revised: 26 January 2019
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Accepted: 28 January 2019
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Published: 1 February 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exposure Assessment of Air Pollution)
Courtyards are an omnipresent feature within the urban environment. Residents often use courtyards as recreation areas, which makes them crucial for the physical and psychological comfort of the urban population. However, considering that courtyards represent enclosed cavities, they are often poorly ventilated spaces and pollutants from neighboring traffic, once entrained, can pose a serious threat to human health. Here, we studied the effects of lateral openings on courtyard pollution and ventilation. Therefore, we performed a set of large-eddy simulations for idealized urban environments with different courtyard configurations. While pollutant concentration and ventilation are barely modified by lateral openings for wide courtyards, lateral openings have a significant effect on the mean concentration, the number of high-concentration events and the ventilation within narrower and deeper courtyards. The impacts of lateral openings on air quality within courtyards strongly depend on their orientation with respect to the flow direction, as well as on the upstream flow conditions and upstream building configuration. We show that lateral openings, in most cases, have a negative impact on air quality; nevertheless, we also present configurations where lateral openings positively impact the air quality within courtyards. These outcomes may certainly contribute to improve future urban planning in terms of health protection.
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Keywords:
courtyard; lagrangian particle model; large-eddy simulation; pollution; urban environment; ventilation
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MDPI and ACS Style
Gronemeier, T.; Sühring, M. On the Effects of Lateral Openings on Courtyard Ventilation and Pollution—A Large-Eddy Simulation Study. Atmosphere 2019, 10, 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10020063
AMA Style
Gronemeier T, Sühring M. On the Effects of Lateral Openings on Courtyard Ventilation and Pollution—A Large-Eddy Simulation Study. Atmosphere. 2019; 10(2):63. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10020063
Chicago/Turabian StyleGronemeier, Tobias, and Matthias Sühring. 2019. "On the Effects of Lateral Openings on Courtyard Ventilation and Pollution—A Large-Eddy Simulation Study" Atmosphere 10, no. 2: 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10020063
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