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Grazziotin, Pablo Colossi (2016) CityZoom UP (Urban Pollution): a computational tool for the fast generation and setup of urban scenarios for CFD and dispersion modelling simulation. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

This research presents the development of CityZoom UP, the first attempt to extend existing urban planning software in order to assist in modelling urban scenarios and setting up simulation parameters for Gaussian dispersion and CFD models. Based on the previous capabilities and graphic user interfaces of CityZoom to model and validate urban scenarios based on Master Plan regulations, new graphic user interfaces, automatic mesh generation and data conversion algorithms have been created to seamlessly generate input data for dispersion model AERMOD and CFD packages CFX and OpenFOAM.

A key feature of CityZoom UP is the introduction of vehicular pollution source parameters in dispersion and CFD models, allowing the urban designer to assess the local impact of adding or modifying a building or group of buildings on the street air quality. Traffic emissions are modelled as sequence of point sources.

CityZoom UP uses Atmospheric Dispersion model AERMOD to assess the dispersion of pollutants in large scale urban environments for strategic planning, quickly providing results for different alternatives of urban scenarios, meteorological and traffic profiles. Sensitivity and validation tests are performed and the results are compared to wind tunnel and real world tracer experiments from the DAPPLE campaign. For the first time in the available literature AERMOD is used to perform dispersion simulation using tracer emission data from mobile vehicular sources in a complex urban scenario, considering building wake effects.

CityZoom UP also provides automated 3D meshing, including mesh refinement, identification of physical boundaries in the mesh, and automatic setup of CFD simulations of urban scenarios, for the detailed calculation of air flow and dispersion of pollutants in specific areas inserted in urban environments. These capabilities can greatly reduces the time necessary for the setup CFD cases, even if it does not affect the computational time needed to run the CFD simulations. Tests show how CityZoom UP can be used to model alternative scenarios for a given location, e.g. present situation and future scenario including a new tall building, and to easily automate the generation of different meshes for each scenario, based on boundary layer and size function refinement parameters.

The present and possible future situations of a real world scenario in Porto Alegre are modelled as a show case for CityZoom UP. The capabilities to assist in modelling alternative urban scenarios and setting up AERMOD and CFD simulations based on those scenarios is demonstrated.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Morvan, Herve P. Hargreaves, David
Keywords:	CityZoom, aermod, cfd, cfx, openfoam, dispersion models
Subjects:	T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Engineering
Item ID:	37914
Depositing User:	Grazziotin, Pablo
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2017 14:03
Last Modified:	26 Oct 2017 14:04
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/37914

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