Energy and Buildings, Vol.88, 57-67, 2015
Estimation of wind energy over roof of two perpendicular buildings
Wind energy development in a built up environment will be an important subject for future sustainable cities. Maturing CFD technology is making more wind flow simulation experiments available, which can be validated by in situ and wind tunnel measurements. Starting from research on wind accumulation by the Venturi effect in built environment, this paper tries to establish the relationship between wind energy potential and the configuration of two perpendicular buildings by performing parametric CFD wind tests. Two reference buildings (width x length x height = 6 m x 15 m x 10 m) forming a symmetrical corner are chosen and different building lengths, widths, heights, corner separation distances, angles of inlet and altitudes of assessment are considered. Results show that, in converging inlet mode, wind energy potential over the roof generally increases sensibly as the corner separation becomes larger, while in diverging inlet mode it decreases rather slowly with corner enlargement. Meanwhile, compared with a single, isolated reference building, most of the corner configuration cases studied here show greater wind energy density over the roof. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.