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THE IMPACT OF BUILDING TOPOGRAPHY ON AEROSOL DISPERSION IN AN URBAN STREET CANYON
Citation:
RICHMOND-BRYANT, J., L. BRIXEY, D. HEIST, S. G. PERRY, G. E. BOWKER, AND R. W. WIENER. THE IMPACT OF BUILDING TOPOGRAPHY ON AEROSOL DISPERSION IN AN URBAN STREET CANYON. Presented at International Aerosol Conference (AAAR/ISAM), St. Paul, MN, September 10 - 15, 2006.
Impact/Purpose:
The scientific modeling expertise of NERL/AMD technical staff often results in requests for staff to provide timely support and advice to EPA Management in the event of a national emergency and to perform the research on model development and evaluation in support of the development of early response models. Flow and dispersion in urban areas is extremely complex and not well characterized in spite of their importance to homeland security and emergency response applications. Specifically, understanding the transport and fate of pollutants in urban canopies is critical for implementing air quality standards, performing risk assessments, developing environmental management strategies, supporting human exposure and health effects studies. Recently, though, much focus has been placed on supporting the development of homeland security tools needed to prepare for and respond to malicious attacks with toxic chemicals. Toward this goal, laboratory studies have been conducted in EPA's Meteorological Wind Tunnel for idealized urban settings, for very complex settings such as lower Manhattan surrounding the World Trade Center (WTC) site, and for very building specific cases such as the Pentagon. Continued studies in a variety of urban morphologies and release scenarios are needed to support a more thorough understanding of urban dispersion and the development of refined numerical modeling approaches.
Description:
This extended abstract describes numerical simulations of the flow through a building array which includes an isolated tall tower. The work seeks to explore the impact of a single tall building on the circulation and channeling of aerosolized traffic emissions within a series of street canyons using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with particle tracking. The abstract will be submitted to the International Aerosol Conference sponsored by the American Association of Aerosol Research to be held in St. Paul MN from September 10-15, 2006 and may be included in the proceedings from that conference.