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

Abstract

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.

Special Issue “Environmental Technology Applications in the Retrofitting of Residential Buildings”

“…The ninth paper, "Impact of enclosure boundary patterns and lift-up design on optimization of summer pedestrian wind environment in high-density residential districts", Ref. [10] tackles the problem of low wind velocities at street level in dense, high-rise residential environments. Summer heat can be alleviated by light cooling winds.…”

The Impact of Ground-Floor Elevation of School Buildings on Courtyard Wind Environment

“…In ideal urban canyons with elevation, average wind speed is negatively related to building height [18]. Elevation design in residential buildings can greatly enhance the pedestrian wind conditions in residential regions [27]. Various building design variables such as elevation form, height, and location of the elevated envelope can affect pedestrian thermal comfort in a high-rise residence's ground floor elevation area [28].…”

“…In summary, previous research has primarily focused on analyzing the impact of the BGFE on the wind environment in various settings, such as individual buildings [6,7], rows of buildings [10,15,16], urban street canyons [9,26], and residential areas [27][28][29]. Most have been in the wind environment in elevated areas [19,28] or around buildings [27,29]. Few researchers have examined the microclimate of courtyard spaces [33], and there is limited research on the wind conditions in U-shaped courtyards [6].…”

Effect of Roof Cooling and Air Curtain Gates on Thermal and Wind Conditions in Stadiums for Hot Climates

“…Therefore, the country should employ energy-efficient cooling strategies [7,8] or low energy/passive cooling techniques [9,10] to minimize the significant energy usage for cooling the stadia. Moreover, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools are powerful in investigating the temperature distributions and wind flow conditions around and within building structures [11,12].…”