Assessment of the environmental impact of the release of pollutants into the atmosphere involves the estimation of diffusion patterns under atmospheric conditions ranging from average to extreme. A detailed knowledge of the wind field is important in the estimation of diffusion patterns, especially if the region of release is characterized by complex terrain. Thus, in the assessment of pollution effects, the understanding and prediction of local wind fields is often very important. One approach to understnading and predicting local wind fields is numerical simulation. A computer program was developed to compute three-dimensional stratified flow around complex terrain for the case of very strong stratification (small internal Froude number). Laboratory experiments were performed for strongly stratified flow past three different terrain models for comparison. The computed results are in fair agreement with the experiments for the cases of two simpler terrain models. The discrepancies are probably attributable to the separated wake in the lee of the models. The agreement was not as good for the case of the more complex terrain. Possible sources of error are discussed in some detail.

"May 1976." "EPA-600/4-76-021." "Contract no. 68-02.1293. "PB-262-540." Bibliography: leaf 29.