Modeling of a heavy gas turbulent dispersion in complex urban environments

Abstract

We report recent advances in the development of a computationally efficient and accurate timedependent RANS-based (T-RANS) method for predicting heavy gas turbulent dispersion in complex urban areas. We analyze two cases: (i) the simplified Kit Fox setup at the field scale, and (ii) a complex urban area (the city of Beijing). The present approach, which models the two-way coupled transport of turbulent airflow and heavy gas concentration, combined with a passive-element method for representing obstacles and buildings, has proven to be both numerically efficient and accurate in predicting the temporal evolution of local concentrations.