Large Scale Modeling of Wind Comfort and Safety Using ‘Pedestrian Comfort Analysis’ App – IBPSA-USA Research Committee
Assessing the impact of building-induced aerodynamics effects on pedestrian comfort and safety at a large scale is of great interest to local governments, architects, urban planners, designers, and developers. A common method of assessing pedestrian comfort is to perform a series of CFD simulations for different wind directions, combining the results with historical wind data obtained from the weather station near the site location and checking compliance with a suitable wind comfort criterion. However, existing simulation tools and methodology demand CFD expertise and in-house high-performance computing facilities.
With the advent of powerful cloud computing, a new ‘Pedestrian Comfort Analysis’ application has been developed by simulationHub that performs the CFD simulations on the cloud and provides comfort and safety plots for large-scale models within hours. Through introduction and case study, this session illustrates the ‘Pedestrian Comfort Analysis’ app to assess pedestrian wind comfort and safety across urban building design.
Learning Objectives:
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Prepare and export city context for external wind flow CFD simulations around buildings.
- Perform pedestrian wind comfort analysis on cloud using simulationHub web application.
- Visualize wind flow patterns around buildings and identify scope for design improvements.
- Generate compelling and immersive visual experiences to communicate design intent.