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Flow and turbulence in an industrial/suburban roughness canopy

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Abstract

A field study conducted to investigate the flow and turbulence structure of the urban boundary layer (UBL) over an industrial/suburban area is described. The emphasis was on morning and evening transition periods, but some measurements covered the entire diurnal cycle. The data analysis incorporated the dependence of wind direction on morphometric parameters of the urban canopy. The measurements of heat and momentum fluxes showed the possibility of a constant flux layer above the height \(z\approx 2{H}\), wherein the Monin-Obukhov Similarity Theory (MOST) is valid; here \(H\) is the averaged building height. For the nocturnal boundary layer, the mean velocity and temperature profiles obeyed classical MOST scaling up to \(\sim 0.5\Lambda \left( {\sim 6{H}}\right) \), where \(\Lambda \) is the Obukhov length scale, beyond which stronger stratification may disrupt the occurrence of constant fluxes. For unstable and neutral cases, MOST scaling described the mean data well up to the maximum measured height \((\sim 6{H})\). Available MOST functions, however, could not describe the measured turbulence structure, indicating the influence of additional governing parameters. Alternative turbulence parameterizations were tested, and some were found to perform well. Calculation of integral length scales for convective and neutral cases allowed a phenomenological description of eddy characteristics within and above the urban canopy layer. The development of a significant nocturnal surface inversion occurred only on certain days, for which a criterion was proposed. The nocturnal UBL exhibited length scale relationships consistent with the evening collapse of the convective boundary layer and maintenance of buoyancy-affected turbulence overnight. The length and velocity scales so identified are useful in parameterizing turbulent dispersion coefficients in different diurnal phases of the UBL.

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Acknowledgments

The experiments described in this paper were funded by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality as part of the Hermoso Park Study. The data were analyzed with the support of the National Science Foundation CMG Program and the Office of Naval Research Award # N00014-11-1-0709, Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program. The authors are grateful to Dr. Laura Leo for assistance in the morphometric analysis and to the students at Arizona State University for their help in setting up the equipment and running balloon flights.

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  1. Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratories, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    A. Dallman, S. Di Sabatino & H. J. S. Fernando

  2. Laboratorio di Micrometeorologia, Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche ed Ambientali, Università del Salento, Lecce, Italy

    S. Di Sabatino

  3. Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    H. J. S. Fernando

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  1. A. Dallman
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Dallman, A., Di Sabatino, S. & Fernando, H.J.S. Flow and turbulence in an industrial/suburban roughness canopy. Environ Fluid Mech 13, 279–307 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-013-9274-7

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