Similar articles

Abstract: Turbulence in the wake generated by wind flow over buildings or obstacles may produce complex flow patterns in downstream areas. Examples include the recirculating flow and wind deficit areas behind an airport terminal building and their potential impacts on the aircraft landing on nearby runways. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the wind flow over an airport terminal building was performed in this study of the effect of the building wake on landing aircraft. Under normal meteorological conditions, the studied airport terminal building causes limited effects on landing aircraft because most of the aircraft have already landed before entering the turbulent wake region. By simulating the approach of a tropical cyclone, additional CFD sensitivity tests were performed to study the impacts of building wake under extreme meteorological conditions. It was found that, in a narrow range of prevalent wind directions with wind speeds larger than a certain threshold value, a substantial drop in wind speed (>3.6 m/s) along the glide path of aircraft was observed in the building wake. Our CFD results also showed that under the most critical situation, a drop in wind speed as large as 6.4 m/s occurred right at the touchdown point of landing aircraft on the runway, an effect which may have a significant impact on aircraft operations. This study indicated that a comprehensive analysis of the potential impacts of building wake on aircraft operations should be carried out for airport terminals and associated buildings in airfields to ensure safe aviation operation under all meteorological conditions and to facilitate implementation of precautionary measures.

[1]FLUENT, 2008. FLUENT, ANSYS. Available from http://www.fluent.com [Accessed on May 5, 2009]

[2]Franke, J., Hirsch, C., 2004. Recommendations on the Use of CFD in Wind Engineering. van Beeck, J.P.A.J. (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Urban Wind Engineering and Building Aerodynamics, COST Action C14, Impact of Wind and Storm on City Life Built Environment. von Karman Institute, Sint-Genesius-Rode, Belgium, p.5-7.

[3]Huang, S., Li, Q.S., Xu, S., 2007. Numerical evaluation of wind effects on a tall steel building by CFD. Journal of Constructional Steel Research, 63(5):612-627.

[4]Kim, S.E., Boysan, F., 1999. Application of CFD to environmental flows. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 81(1-3):145-158.

[5]Krüs, H.W., Eisenga, M., 1999. Numerieke Simulaties van de Omstroming van Gebouwen en de Bijbehorende omgeving. Report, CFD-990801, Cyclone Fluid Dynamics, the Netherlands, p.26 (in Dutch).

[6]Krüs, H.W., Haanstra, J.O., van der Ham, R., Wichers Schreur, B., 2003. Numerical simulations of wind measurements at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 91(10):1215-1223.

[7]Launder, B.E., Spalding, D.B., 1972. Lectures in Mathematical Models of Turbulence. Academic Press, London, England.

[8]Neofytou, P., Venetsanos, A.G., Vlachogiannis, D., Bartzis, J.G., Scaperdas, A., 2006. CFD simulations of the wind environment around an airport terminal building. Environmental Modelling & Software, 21(4):520-524.

[9]Okada, H., Ha, Y.C., 1992. Comparison of wind tunnel and full-scale pressure measurement tests on the Texas Tech Building. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 43(1-3):1601-1612.

[10]Senthooran, S., Lee, D.D., Parameswaran, S., 2004. A computational model to calculate the flow-induced pressure fluctuations on buildings. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics, 92(13):1131-1145.

[11]Szepesi, Z., Lajos, T., 1998. Wind Tunnel Investigation on Flow and Pollutant Transport past Two Buildings. Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Mechanical Engineering, GEPESZET, Part 2, Budapest, Hungary.

[12]Yoshie, R., Mochida, A., Tominaga, Y., Kataoka, H., Harimoto, K., Nozu, T., Shirasawa, T., 2005. Cooperative Project for CFD Prediction of Pedestrian Wind Environment in the Architectural Institute of Japan. Náprstek, J., Fischer, C. (Ed.), The Fourth European & African Conference on Wind Engineering, ITAM AS CR, Prague.