Developing a methodology to model trees for CFD in outdoor comfort

More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, and the trend is rising. Outdoor comfort in the built environment is an increasingly important issue for architects and urban planners. Trees are an essential factor when it comes to air quality, but also comfort and wind protection. To predict how much trees can influence wind movements on an urban scale, they need to be included in simulations.

For this the objective was to develop a methodology to model and incorporate trees in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation and analysis for outdoor comfort. This will add to the resistance provided by trees and the effect of the same in wind flow around the buildings. The wind that flows in and around a built space is critical to design a thermally comfortable building. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to analyze the intensity and direction of the wind with accuracy. This research uses steady state CFD analysis to understand influence of trees in an urban built environment. Such simulations calculate "stationary" situations, i.e. they do not represent changes during time.

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Mentors: Mohammad Hamza, Markus Krauss, Alice Chevrier, Guowei Wu

Sandhiya Jayakumar – India

Sandhiya Jayakumar – India

Sandhiya is an architect, a Building Energy Analyst and a Green Building Consultant. She has her bachelor’s in architecture and her Masters in Tech-Building Energy Performance. As LEED and Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) Certified Professional she worked for Environmental Design Solution in New Delhi before joining us.