On the estimation of wind speed in urban canyons for ventilation purposes—Part 1: Coupling between the undisturbed wind speed and the canyon wind

The present paper presents a computational methodology to calculate the wind speed in canyons when there is a coupling between the undisturbed wind speed and the airflow inside the canyon. This can happen when the undisturbed wind speed above the canyon exceeds a threshold values, i.e. 4 m/sec. The proposed algorithms are presented in details. Experimental data collected through extensive monitoring in four urban canyons in Athens Greece, are used to validate the accuracy of the proposed model. A very good agreement between the experimental and the theoretical is found for most of the cases. The proposed model can be used to calculate the wind speed in canyons for natural ventilation purposes or for any other type of studies where the wind speed is required.