Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134516
Title: Relationship between pedestrian-level outdoor thermal comfort and building morphology in a high-density city
Authors: WAI KA MING 
YUAN CHAO 
Lai, Alan
Yu, Peter KN
Keywords: Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Environmental Sciences
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Heat stress
Urban climate modeling
Urban sustainability
Computational fluid dynamics
URBAN HEAT-ISLAND
TEMPERATURE
VENTILATION
STRATEGIES
DISPERSION
POLLUTION
CITIES
WIND
Issue Date: 15-Mar-2020
Publisher: ELSEVIER
Citation: WAI KA MING, YUAN CHAO, Lai, Alan, Yu, Peter KN (2020-03-15). Relationship between pedestrian-level outdoor thermal comfort and building morphology in a high-density city. SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 708. ScholarBank@NUS Repository. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134516
Abstract: Urban compact buildings impose large frictional drag on boundary-layer air flow and create stagnant air within the building environment. It results in exacerbating the street-level outdoor thermal comfort (OTC). It is common to perform in-situ measurements of the OTC in different urban forms and to study their relationship. However, it is impossible to do so from a planning perspective because of the absence of physical planned urban forms. Our objective was to quantify the thermal environment and OTC in different planned complex urban forms by well-validated numerical models. We coupled a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to an OTC (Rayman) model to study the OTC. The κ–ω SST turbulent model was adopted for the CFD simulations, with accuracy of the turbulent model validated by wind tunnel measurements. The highest calculated air temperature within the street canyon of a planned bulky urban form could reach more than 5 °C higher than the surrounding environment. Within the tested urban forms, our coupled model predicted mean radiant temperature comparable with measurements in the literature. The model also produced sensible street-level physiologically equivalent temperatures (PETs) when comparing with those listed in the human thermal sensation categories. In the morning, the predicted PETs within all the urban forms were lower than that in open areas, which indicated that the shading of buildings effectively reduced the PET increase due to solar irradiance. At noon, increases in PETs by more than 10 °C relative to the morning situation indicated that when the buildings acted as heat sources after insolation absorption, increase in the air temperature at the street intersection and in the street canyon made an important contribution to the receiver PETs. The reduction in building lengths and increase in the low-level porosity were the most effective ways to reduce the heat stress at the pedestrian-level.
Source Title: SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
URI: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/193613
ISSN: 0048-9697
1879-1026
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134516
Appears in Collections:Staff Publications
Elements

Show full item record
Files in This Item:
File Description SizeFormatAccess SettingsVersion 
Thermal comfort_Building morphology_2020.pdf1.85 MBAdobe PDF

CLOSED

Published

Google ScholarTM

Check

Altmetric


Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.