Impact of Enclosure Boundary Patterns and Lift-Up Design on Optimization of Summer Pedestrian Wind Environment in High-Density Residential Districts

• Main Authors: Zhengrong Jiang, Weijun Gao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-05-01
• Series: Energies
• Subjects: high-density residential district; pedestrian wind environment; computational fluid dynamics; enclosure boundary; lift-up design
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/11/3199

A comfortable wind environment favors the sustainable development of urban residential districts and public health. However, the rapid growth of high-rise urban residential districts leads to low wind velocity environments in summer. This study examines the influence of enclosure boundary patterns and lift-up design on the wind environment and proposes an optimization strategy to improve the low wind velocity environment in residential districts in summer. A typical residential district in Hangzhou was selected; the average wind velocity, calm wind zone ratio and comfortable wind zone ratio were selected as the evaluation indexes. The wind environment for different enclosure boundary patterns and lift-up designs were obtained via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results indicate that the pedestrian wind environment is greatly improved in residential districts by reducing the height/width of the enclosure boundary, increasing the permeability rate and adopting a lift-up design in all buildings within residential districts. A combination of permeable railings and lift-up design is recommended; this can increase the average wind velocity and the ratio of comfortable wind zones by 70% and 200%, respectively. This study provides practical guidelines for the optimization of a low wind velocity environment in Chinese high-density residential districts in summer.