CFD simulation of snow transport over flat, uniformly rough, open terrain: Impact of physical and computational parameters

Luyang Kang, Xuanyi Zhou, T. van Hooff, Bert Blocken, Ming Gu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

51 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

In the past, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been successfully applied for the prediction of snow drift around buildings and on building roofs. A literature study indicates that a wide range of influential computational and physical parameters exist for snow drifting predictions in CFD, while the impact of these parameters is unclear, resulting in a lack of available CFD simulation guidelines. Therefore, this study presents a systematic and generic analysis with emphasis on the fundamentals of snow transport prediction techniques. Snow transport over flat, uniformly rough, open terrain, including snow saltation and snow suspension is successfully simulated using CFD and the results are compared to field measurements of snow concentrations for validation. This paper investigates the impact of grid resolution, falling velocity of snow, turbulent Schmidt number, threshold friction velocity of snow and turbulence model on the CFD simulation results. The results show that the falling velocity and the turbulent Schmidt number have the largest impact. A slight change in the falling velocity or the turbulent Schmidt number significantly impacts the predicted snow concentration in the air. In addition, the turbulence model mainly affects the turbulent kinetic energy, another key factor that influences the numerical predictions of snow transport.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)213-226
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics
Volume177
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2018

Funding

The research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 51778492 , 51478359 ). The first author's work was also supported by the China Scholarship Council ( CSC 201606260164 ) during his visit to the Department of the Built Environment of Eindhoven University of Technology. Twan van Hooff is a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at KU Leuven in Flanders, Belgium (project FWO 1.2.R97.18N ), its financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the partnership with ANSYS CFD .

Keywords

  • Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
  • Open terrain
  • Parametric study
  • Sensitivity study
  • Snow transport

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