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Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10
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Fluid dynamic and heat transfer parameters in an urban canyon

S. Bottillo ⇑, A. De Lieto Vollaro, G. Galli, A. Vallati
Sapienza University of Rome – DIAEE – Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy

Received 28 June 2013; received in revised form 22 October 2013; accepted 24 October 2013
Available online 22 November 2013

Communicated by: Associate Editor Matheos Santamouris

Abstract

A microclimatic analysis in a typical urban configuration, has been carried out. Using a CFD method, a N-S oriented urban street
canyon, with a given H/W ratio, has been examined. The standard k–e turbulence model has been used to simulate a three-dimensional
flow field and to calculate the thermo-fluid dynamics parameters that characterize the street canyon. The aim of this study is to inves-
tigate the effect of solar radiation on the flow field and thermal parameters within the canyon. A comparison between transient and sta-
tionary simulations has been performed to evaluate the importance of considering the thermal inertia effects in an urban street canyon
study. The dynamic characteristics of the 3D flow in the canyon have been compared with other numerical simulations and experimental
results. Furthermore a thermo-fluid dynamic analysis of natural convection effects on the heat transfer coefficient and turbulent kinetic
energy, has been carried out.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Urban microclimate; Urban canyon; CFD; Solar radiation

1. Introduction a grid of buildings. By numerical tests characterized by a

The landscape of dense urban areas can be described by
units of street delimited by two continuous rows of build-
ings to form a “canyon”. This geometry is often described
by a single parameter, the canyon aspect ratio (H/W),
which is defined as the ratio of the building height (H) to
the width between buildings (W). As to the incoming solar
radiation and the heating of canyon surfaces, the orienta-
tion of the canyon relative to the solar path is also critical
in determining the timing and extent to which surfaces
receive direct sunlight. Several studies have been performed
on different street canyons (Takebayashi and Moriyama,
2012; Bozonnet et al., 2005; Lei et al., 2012; Xie et al.,
2007). An experimental validation of a 3D numerical sim-
ulation has been performed by Assimakopoulos et al.
(2006); they performed tests using a numerical model on
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 06 44 58 56 64; fax: +39 06 48 80 120.
E-mail address: simone.bottillo@uniroma1.it (S. Bottillo).
2D spatial domain and with assigned surfaces tempera-
tures, Lei et al. (2012) studied the impact of ground heating
on the flow fields in a street canyons, Xie et al. (2007) stud-
ied the effects of facßades and ground heating on the pollu-
tant dispersion, Saneinejad et al. (2011) investigated on the
heat transfer coefficient in a street canyon, simulated as a
cavity, using the low-Reynolds number modeling; they
found a strong influence of thermal effect on the flow field.
Allegrini et al. (2012a) analyzed the convective heat trans-
fer at building facßades in several urban configurations,
using the adaptive wall function approach developed by
Defraeye et al. (2011) and Allegrini et al. (2012b); they con-
cluded that the AWF provides more accurate heat transfer
analysis in urban CFD studies. Offerle et al. (2007) used
wind and temperature measurements to examine the ther-
mal structure within a street canyon. They found that
buoyancy effects were not seen to have as large an impact
on the measured flow field as has been shown in the numer-
ical experiments. Kovar-Panskus et al. (2002) performed a

0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2013.10.031
2 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10

wind tunnel study of the influence of wall-heating on the and

flow regime in a simulated canyon. They found little evi-   
dence of thermal effects, except in a very thin layer near @ @ @ l @e
ðqeÞ þ ðqeui Þ ¼ lþ t
the heated wall, as Louka et al. (2002) noted from an exper- @t @xi @xj re @xj
imental campaign in Nantes, France. Most of numerical e e2
studies have been performed on infinitely long street can- þ C 1e ðGk þ C 3e Gb Þ  C 2e q ð5Þ
k k
yons and the prevailing wind direction has been assumed
perpendicular to them, so that the spatial domain has been where Gk is the generation of turbulence kinetic energy due
simplified from 3-D to 2-D. In this study, simulations have to the mean velocity gradients; Gb is the generation of turbu-
been performed on a 3-D domain, investigating the impacts lence kinetic energy due to buoyancy; C1e, C2e and C3e con-
of solar heating and ambient wind speed on the flow fields stants and the KT and lt expressions are reported in the
and surfaces temperatures in a street canyon with a fixed standard k–e model of Ansys Fluent 14.0, 2011; rk and re
H/W and L/W ratios. It has been chosen to study a street are the turbulent Prandtl numbers for k and e, respectively.
canyon isolated from the urban environment, as Blocken To evaluate the impact of thermal effects, the incompressible
et al. (2007) and Allegrini et al. (2012a) did, to evaluate ideal gas module has been used for air density.
how the buildings configuration affects a spatially homoge- The simulated urban canyon has the following charac-
neous dynamic and thermal field. Using the commercial teristics: it has an aspect ratio H/W = 1 and L/W = 5,
CFD code Ansys-Fluent, a series of numerical tests were the orientation is N–S, the buildings width and height are
performed to point out the differences between transient 20 m, the street width is 20 m and the street length is
and steady simulations and to investigate the effects of ther- 100 m. Based on the best practice guidelines by Franke
mal field on the surface temperature on the heat transfer et al. (2007) and Tominaga et al. (2008), the dimensions
coefficient and air velocity and turbulence. of the computational domain have been chosen in relation
to the buildings height H (Fig. 1): the distance between the
2. CFD numerical model side walls of the buildings and the north, east and south
planes is 5H = 100 m, instead the west plane is
In this section, the parameters of the computational 15H = 300 m from the westerly building. The distance
model and the boundary conditions are outlined. between the roofs of the buildings and the upper plane is
The simulations have been performed with the commer- 5H = 100 m. The buildings dimensions determine the dif-
cial CFD code Ansys Fluent 14.0, 3D double precision, ferent domain extension behind the built area. When the
pressure based version and the steady RANS equations flow direction is transversal to the canyon length, the
have been solved in combination with the standard k–e obstacle size is maximum and the flow re-development
model. The governing equations can be expressed as requires a distance of 15H from the buildings to the
follows: outflow bounds. Instead when the flow is longitudinal to
Momentum equation: the canyon direction, the obstacle size is minimum and
the distance behind the built area is 5H. Those dimensions
@ui p l @ 2 ui
1 @ @
allow to set the zero static pressure on the outlet plane and
uj ¼ þ  u0i u0j þ fi : ð1Þ
@xj q @xi q @xi @xj @xj zero gradients of all variables at the top and lateral sides of
the domain. The domain dimension over the buildings have
Continuity equation:
been chosen to take into account the blockage ratio,
@ui defined as the ratio of the area blocked by the buildings
¼ 0: ð2Þ
@xi to the total cross-section area. This parameter depends
on the obstacles size and wind direction: when the building
Heat conservation equation: obstacle area is minimum, the blockage ratio assumes the
value of 2%, instead when the wind impacts transversally
 
@T @ @T
ui þ KT ¼ 0; ð3Þ to the canyon direction, it assumes the maximum value
@xi @xi @xi
of 5.5%. To simulate the soil influence, the computational
where ui is the average speed of air flow; u0i u0j is the Rey- domain has been extended 5 m below the ground level.
nolds stress; q is the air density; l is the molecular viscosity; The soil has been simulated setting the following
fi is the thermal-induced buoyant force; T is the potential parameters: density = 1000 kg/m3; specific heat = 1000 J/
temperature; KT is the heat diffusivity. The standard k–e kgK; thermal conductivity = 2 W/mK; temperature
model has been used to solve the turbulence problem. at -5 m = 288 K; emissivity = 0.9; solar radiation absorp-
The turbulence kinetic energy, k, and its rate of dissipation, tivity (direct visible and infrared) = 0.8. The building walls
e, are obtained from the following transport equations: have: density = 1000 kg/m3; specific heat = 1000 J/kg K;
@ @ @
  
lt @k thermal conductivity = 0.15 W/m K; thickness = 0.30 m;
ðqkÞ þ ðqkui Þ ¼ lþ þ Gk þ Gb  qe internal air temperature = 299 K; emissivity = 0.9; solar
@t @xi @xj rk @xj
radiation absorptivity (direct visible and near infra-
ð4Þ red) = 0.8. The resulting domain size is: 17.25  106 m3.
 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10
Fig. 1. Three-dimensional domain view and points and planes of interest.
The temperature of surfaces has been obtained as result of
the heat transfers, setting up: the solar load module (longi-
tude: 9.18, latitude: 45.47, UTC: +1), the temperature of
undisturbed air (303 K), the temperature of the internal
air of the buildings (299 K). To ensure an high quality of
the computational grid, it is fully structured and the shape
of the cells has been chosen hexahedral (Fig. 2): the normal
vector of a cell surface is parallel to the line connecting the
midpoints of neighboring cells. To simulate flow fields, in
the area of interest, 40 cells per cube root of the building
volume has been used and 20 cells per building separation
(Franke et al., 2007). For the vertical resolution of the can-
yon 20 cells have been used. Furthermore, the grid has been
arranged so that the evaluation height (1.5–5 m) and the
pedestrian wind speed at 1.5–2 m height is located higher
than the 3rd grid from ground surface. According to the
study of Ramponi and Blocken (2012), the velocity profile
has been set giving a uniform velocity magnitude of 2 m/s
at the velocity inlet boundary, the turbulence intensity at
10%. The aerodynamic roughness value z0 has been set in
relation to the roughness parameters in the ground surface
boundary conditions (Ramponi and Blocken, 2012): the
sand-grain roughness height ks and the roughness constant
Cs. Setting ks = 1m and Cs = 0.5, the resulting z0 (Eq. (6))
is 0.05 m (Blocken et al., 2007; Ansys Fluent User’s Guide,
2011), that has been considered an appropriate value to
represent the roughness of the outer region (Blocken
et al., 2007; Norris and Richards, 2010). A zero roughness
height has been used for the building surfaces.
Fig. 2. Views of the computational grid.
3
9:793z0
ks ¼ ð6Þ
Cs
As the flow approaches the built area the velocity inlet
profile looks fully-developed before reaching the buildings,
as it can be seen in Fig. 3, and it can be represented by Eq.
(7), where u* is the friction velocity, k is the Von Karman
constant (0.4) and z is the height coordinate.
u
 
z þ z0
uðzÞ ¼ ln ð7Þ
k z0
The friction velocity value has been obtained by the cor-
relation with the calculated value of the turbulent kinetic
energy (k) at the first node above the ground, as shown
in Eq. (8) (Franke et al., 2007).
u ¼ k 0:5 C 0:25
l ð8Þ
where Cl = 0.09.
In Fig. 4 is shown the comparison between the velocity
inlet profile before reaching the urban canyon and the pro-
file calculated with the logarithmic law (Eq. (7)).
3. Validation of the CFD model by wind tunnel experiment
data
The validation of the mathematical model used in our
study has been carried out through the comparison with
the wind tunnel experiment performed by Uehara et al.
(2000). In order to describe the roughness elements of the
urban environment, 44 rows of blocks with a size of
4 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10
Fig. 3. Wind velocity inlet profiles at different distances from the velocity inlet.
Fig. 4. Comparison between the simulated wind velocity inlet profile and
the profile calculated with the logarithmic law (Eq. (7)).
100  100  50 mm3 have been used. Further, to represent
street canyons, 14 rows of blocks with a size of
100  100  100 mm3 have been set. The measured data
have been carried out in the space between the 5th and
the 6th of the 14 rows. The experiment has been character-
ized by a flow direction transversal to rows of blocks and,
at the measurement location, the flow appeared totally can-
alized. A numerical validation test has been performed on
our street canyon model, which has been scaled by the
reduction factor 1/200 and where the wind direction has
been considered totally transversal to the canyon direction.
The air temperature Ta was set as 20 °C (293 K) and the
ground temperature Tf was set as 79 °C (352 K), the inflow
wind speed u0 was set as 1.5 m/s in order to reproduce the
conditions of the experimental tests. The comparison
between the data obtained with the wind tunnel experi-
ments and the numerical test are illustrated in Fig. 5: the
vertical profile of normalized horizontal velocity u/u0 and
T T f
T a T f
, evaluated on a central vertical line within the street
canyon. As in Lei et al. (2012) study, it can be observed
that there is a good agreement between the mathematical
model and the wind tunnel experiment within the canyon.
Instead the numerical tests overestimate the wind velocity
and the air temperature above the canyon.
4. Results
4.1. Comparison between steady and transient simulation
A comparison between the results obtained by the
steady simulation and the transient one has been carried
out. The steady simulation has been performed on 26 June
at 14:00, instead the transient simulation has been started
on 18 June at 00:00 and it has been stopped 9 days after,
on 26 June at 24:00. The ground temperature has been cho-
sen as parameter of comparison between the transient and
steady simulation, to highlight the thermal inertia effects,
because the ground is the element with higher thermal
capacity. The results of the steady simulation have been
compared with the last day results of the transient one.
In Fig. 6 are shown the ground temperature values of the
three points of interest (Point A and B within the canyon,
placed at 1 m away from building, respectively from the
easterly facßade and from the westerly one; Point Ext, exter-
nal to the canyon, as shown in Fig. 1). As it can been
noticed, the temperatures of the various points chosen to
study the urban canyon in transient case are very similar
to the stationary one. This does not mean that the temper-
ature of the soil inner layers are the same for both simula-
tions, but we are interested on the surface temperature and
to study its influence on the flow field. The ground temper-
ature of the external point is the same for both simulations,
instead, it can be noticed a difference of 3° for the point A
and a smaller one for point B. Those differences are due to
the ground thermal inertia which determines a lower tem-
perature value as the point passes from shadow to sun
exposition and viceversa. The same consideration with an
opposite sign can be applied to the point B, which enter
into shadow shortly before 14:00. It can be concluded that
the stationary case for a thermo-fluid dynamic simulation
of a street canyon is representative of the physical phenom-
ena of the maximum solar load. For this reason, further
analysis will be performed on the stationary case, which
is much lighter as to the computational time. The analysis
of hourly trends of ground temperatures shows that it is
higher within the canyon than outside, during the hours
of maximum solar radiation, while, during the rest of the
day, their values are significantly lower due to the effect
of shadows.
 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10 5

Fig. 5. Comparison between the simulated data and the observed data by Uehara et al. (2000). (a) u/u0 and (b) (T  Tf)/(Ta  Tf).

Fig. 6. Comparison between transient and steady simulation: hourly trends of ground temperature of the three points of interest and the values calculated
at 14:00 with the steady simulation.

4.2. Impact of thermal effects
In order to evaluate the impact of thermal effects on our
street canyon model, a comparison between two simula-
tions has been performed. The simulations have been per-
formed in stationary case on 26 June at 11:00. In the first
simulation the natural convection has been excluded,
instead in the second one it has been considered. The flow
regime impacting on the built area is described by a veloc-
ity inlet magnitude of 2 m/s and a wind direction of 45°N,
so that the hottest facßade is the windward one. The result-
ing average Richardson number (Ri) for the windward facß-
ade is 2.9 and for the leeward one is 1.0. The three
dimensional effect of the flow is evident in the formation
of a spiral flow, produced by the combination of the down-
ward vertical vortex and the longitudinal component of the
wind velocity, as reported in other 3D simulations (Assi-
makopoulos et al., 2006; Santamouris et al., 1999); they
6 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10

found that the wind field in urban areas is quite complex
and the simulated wind speed intensities can be totally dif-
ferent from the measured data. Fig. 7 shows the velocity
vectors on three vertical planes of interest for both simula-
tions. The figure shows the XZ velocity vectors for both
simulations and the XY velocity vectors for the simulation
with natural convection activated. On the XY plane, the
flow pattern does not change significantly for the two sim-
ulations; Fig. 7(d) shows that the flow within the canyon is
transported from the north opening to the south one. The
North and South planes are placed at 10 m from the
respective openings, instead the Central plane is in the mid-
dle of the canyon. The facßade of the easterly building, in
shadow, is on the right side of the figures, instead the
facßade of the westerly one, exposed to the sun radiation
is on the left side. When the natural convection is deacti-
vated, the flow pattern changes significantly from the north
opening to the Central plane. Instead, from the Central
plane to the south opening, the flow pattern remains basi-
cally constant. As it can be seen in Fig. 7(a1) and (d), in the
North plane the formation of a double vortex can be
observed. The vortices are generated by geometrical
discontinuities (the roof and the vertical corner of the east-
erly building) and they have two different rotation axis. The
upper vortex has its axis parallel to the canyon direction
(Fig. 7(a1)), and the lower has a vertical one (Fig. 7(d)).
From Central plane to the South plane, the aerodynamic
vortex coming from the roof is fully-formed and it occupies
all the space between buildings (Fig. 7(b1) and (c1)). In the
South plane (Fig. 7(c1)) the mass flow rate coming from the
roof is zero and the vortex is transported from the easterly
facßade to the westerly one by the longitudinal flow. The
flow pattern of the North plane when the natural convec-
tion is activated (Fig. 7(a2)), is double-vortex in structure
as in the first simulation. In the Central and South plane
(Fig. 7(b2) and (c2)) the flow pattern is divided in two

Fig. 7. XZ velocity vectors on the North, Central and South planes, respectively (a), (b) and (c). No natural convection simulation (a1), (b1) and (c1);
simulation with natural convection activated (a2), (b2) and (c2). XY velocity vectors at 10 m height with natural convection activated (d).
 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10
counter-rotating vortex: the upper one due to the geomet-
rical discontinuity and the second one, in the low corner
near the hot wall, due to the buoyancy effect. The convec-
tive vortex appears less developed than the simulations car-
ried out by Lei et al. (2012) and Xie et al. (2007), probably
because of the 3D nature of our simulation. The impact of
thermal effects have been studied also through the analysis
of velocity and turbulent kinetic energy near the canyon
surfaces on the Central plane, for both simulations. For
the building facßades a vertical line near the westerly one
exposed to the sun radiation, from ground level to building
roof, has been considered. For the ground surface instead,
an horizontal line, from the easterly facßade to the westerly
one, has been taken. All those lines of interest are placed at
0.40 m from the respective surfaces. In Fig. 8 are shown:
the vertical trends of Z velocity component and turbulent
kinetic energy near the sun exposed facßade, wall tempera-
ture and heat transfer coefficient on the facßade itself; veloc-
ity magnitude and turbulent kinetic energy above the
ground, temperature and heat transfer coefficient on the
ground are shown in Fig. 8(d1) and (d2). The Z velocity
component along a vertical line at 0.40 m from the sun-
exposed wall (Fig. 8(a1) and (a2)) without natural convec-
tion is negative (downward) and it is affected only by the
aerodynamic vortex, instead, when the natural convection
is activated, it is affected by buoyancy forces and it is posi-
tive, from the ground to the half height of the building. On
the central plane, the buoyancy effect is maximum at 4 m
height from the ground level and it extends up to 0.60 m
distance from the hot wall. It has been noticed that the
temperatures of the facßade and of the ground that are
not exposed to the direct radiation, are 6° higher than
the air temperature, but it does not seem to have relevant
effects on the flow field. On the horizontal line the velocity
magnitude is lower when the thermal effects are excluded.
The turbulent kinetic energy is higher near all the surfaces
when the natural convection is activated and it strongly
affects the heat transfer coefficient trends. In particular,
Fig. 8(b1), (b2), (d1) and (d2) shows that, activating the
natural convection, the turbulent kinetic energy increases
four times and the heat transfer coefficient doubles, from
ground level to half height of the building. The natural
convection effect determines also an increase of air circula-
tion within the canyon; as it can be seen in Fig. 8(c1) and
(c2), when the natural convection module is activated, the
velocity magnitude reaches the value of 2 m/s, instead
when it is deactivated, the maximum velocity magnitude
value is 1.5 m/s. As it can be seen in Fig. 8(a1), (a2), (c1)
and (c2), the surfaces temperatures are several degrees
lower when natural convection is activated. In order to
evaluate the impact of 3D effects on the heat transfer coef-
ficient, we have performed a 2D simulation and a 3D sim-
ulation characterized by a transversal wind direction,
excluding the natural convection. The results show that,
when the domain is tridimensional and the wind direction
is transversal to the canyon axis, the heat transfer coeffi-
cient values are very similar to the 2D simulation. The
7
2D results of the heat transfer coefficient (Fig. 9) are con-
gruent with the values reported in Saneinejad et al.
(2011), except for the upper part of the windward facßade,
where our simulation shows higher values; this difference
of heat transfer coefficient is due to the shape of our 2D
canyon model; Saneinejad et al. (2011) simulate the street
canyon as a cavity in the ground, instead we simulate it
as two buildings over the ground level. When the domain
is 3D and the wind direction is 45°N, the heat transfer coef-
ficient values without buoyancy effects, shown in
Fig. 8(b1), and the values obtained with buoyancy effects,
Fig. 8(b2), are higher than the ones found in our 2D
(Fig. 9) and 3D transversal simulation, and the ones
reported by Saneinejad et al. (2011) and Allegrini et al.
(2012a). Those differences are probably due to the 3D
effects and to the longitudinal speed component within
the canyon that, when the ambient wind speed is 2 m/s
and the direction is 45°N, is more than two times higher
than the value of 0.5 m/s of the 2D simulations, reported
in Saneinejad et al. (2011). Allegrini et al. (2012b) showed
that, when the Ri > 1, the standard wall function overesti-
mates the value of heat transfer coefficient; our results
show that even when the natural convection is not consid-
ered, the hc values are much higher than the 2D simula-
tions. Natural convection increases remarkably (as shown
in Fig. 8) and the values seem to be similar to the measured
ones on building facßades (Defraeye et al., 2010). In this
study, the calculation of the heat transfer coefficient (hc)
is carried out at numerical level by the usual relations of
the standard k–e model and it is strongly related to air ther-
mal conductivity (kT):
dT
kT
hc ¼
dy
ð9Þ
T
The air thermal conductivity is given by the following
expression:
kT ¼ qcp K T ð10Þ
where the thermal turbulent diffusivity (KT) is related to the
kinematic turbulent viscosity (tT) through the turbulent
Prandtl number:
tT
PrT ¼ ð11Þ
KT
Which is taken equal to 0.85.
Thus, the kinematic turbulent viscosity is related to the
turbulent kinetic energy (k) and to turbulent dissipation
rate (e) according to the following relationship:
k2
tT ¼ c l ð12Þ
e
where cl is 0.09.
The turbulent dissipation rate e is expressed by the fol-
lowing equation (Tominaga et al., 2008):
cl3=4 k 3=2
e¼ ð13Þ
l
8 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10

Fig. 8. Impact of thermal effects on a vertical central plane within the canyon, comparison between parameter evaluated without natural convection
(subscript 1) and with natural convection (subscript 2): Z velocity component along a vertical line at 0.40 m from the windward facßade and its temperature
on a parallel line on the facßade itself (a1 and a2); turbulent kinetic energy and heat transfer coefficient along the same lines (b1 and b2); velocity magnitude
along an horizontal line at 0.40 m from the ground surface and it is temperature (c1 and c2), turbulent kinetic energy and heat transfer coefficient along the
same lines (d1 and d2).
 S. Bottillo et al. / Solar Energy 99 (2014) 1–10
Fig. 9. Heat transfer coefficient on the windward (WW) facßade and on the
leeward (LW) one for the 2D simulation of the street canyon.
where l is the mixing length.
So the correlation between the heat transfer coefficient
and turbulent kinetic energy is:
dT
qcp c1=4
l l dy 1=2
hc ¼ k ð14Þ
PrT T
In literature there are several empirical relationships
between heat transfer coefficient over the external surfaces
of the buildings (hc) and air velocity (Defraeye et al., 2010),
but a few authors (Oleson et al., 2008; Masson, 2000) con-
sider the effect of turbulent kinetic energy on hc. In those
studies the heat transfer coefficient is related to the friction
velocity value, through the correlations reported in Mas-
cart et al. (1995), so that the heat transfer coefficient
depends on the atmospheric stability considering average
values on all the surfaces and for every wind speed direc-
tions. In our analysis, instead, the heat transfer coefficient
is related to the square root of turbulent kinetic, as shown
in Fig. 8 and in Eq. (14). It has been noticed a direct cor-
relation of the heat transfer coefficient and the local ther-
mal stratification: for example, the thermal effects on the
heat transfer coefficient on the leeward wall in shadow
are less marked than on the sun-exposed wall, but an
increase of the average heat transfer coefficient can be
observed (from 7.1 W/m2 K without thermal effects to
10.5 W/m2 K with natural convection module activated).
It seems that the buoyancy induced vortex affects the over-
all canyon flow field. These variations of heat exchange
processes among the various surfaces of the canyon, can
have an effect on the surface temperatures, as seen in
Fig. 8, and then a direct influence on thermal comfort indi-
ces like the mean radiant temperature (De Lieto Vollaro
et al., 2013), in particular the heat transfer coefficient is
9
related to the square root of turbulent kinetic, as shown
in Fig. 8 and in Eq. (14), that in turn depends on the local
difference between the surfaces and air temperature.
5. Conclusions
In this study a numerical simulation method has been
used to investigate the physical phenomena that character-
ize a street canyon with a certain H/W ratio, N-S oriented,
during a summer day. A fully 3D model has been simu-
lated, considering the effects of solar radiation and radia-
tive exchange on canyon air and surfaces temperature. In
the first part, a comparison between a steady and a tran-
sient simulation has been carried out, and it can be con-
cluded that the stationary case is representative of
thermo-fluid dynamics parameters within the canyon dur-
ing the hottest hours of the day. In the second part of
the study the impact of thermal effects on the flow field
has been analyzed and the difference between a 2D simula-
tion and the fully tridimensional case has been shown.
Even when the flow field is characterized by a strong veloc-
ity component parallel to the canyon direction, it has been
noticed that the buoyancy forces determine a thermal
induced vortex near the hottest facßade. The obtained
results are coherent with the studies on numerical simula-
tions performed by Lei et al. (2012) and Xie et al. (2007),
even if their simulation has been carried out on 2D
domains and the thermal effects are more significant. The
importance of considering a 3D domain has been shown,
because the flow field within the canyon changes signifi-
cantly as the air passes through the canyon itself and the
heat transfer coefficient values are remarkable higher than
the 2D and the 3D transversal case. It can be seen that the
wind direction strongly affects the thermal processes within
the canyon. So that further analysis must be performed
considering not only different wind velocity intensities but
also different directions. Besides, buoyancy forces affect
the flow field, determining thermal induced vortices and a
higher value of turbulent kinetic energy, affecting the heat
transfer coefficient and consequently the surface tempera-
tures. Taking into account that the standard k–e seems to
overestimate the production of turbulent kinetic energy
(Assimakopoulos et al., 2006; Lakehal, 1998; Meroney
et al., 1999), further numerical analysis and measurement
campaigns must be performed to investigate the correlation
between the heat transfer coefficient and the characteristics
(magnitude and direction) of flow field in an urban canyon,
in order to determine the local heat exchange processes and
their effects on the thermal comfort in outdoor spaces and
on the buildings energy needs for cooling and heating.
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