Modelling concentration fluctuations in plumes dispersing in urban canopy flows within a single-particle lagrangian description for turbulent and molecular mixing

• Author / Creator

  Postma, Jonathan Victor

• An interaction by exchange with the conditional mean (IECM) micromixing model is coupled to a three-dimensional single-particle Lagrangian stochastic (LS) model to estimate concentration fluctuations in plumes of a passive (i.e., non-buoyant), non-reactive (i.e., no chemistry) tracer dispersing from a variety of source configurations in four neutrally stratified flows: a horizontally-homogeneous wall shear layer flow; a horizontally-homogeneous representation of the Tombstone canopy flow; a three-dimensional inhomogeneous representation of the Tombstone canopy flow; and a three-dimensional inhomogeneous representation of the Mock Urban Setting Trials (MUST) canopy flow. The IECM micromixing model incorporates the combined effects of turbulent and molecular mixing on particle concentration. This allows the numerical estimation of all moments of the scalar concentration field, which is a significant advance over traditional LS models given that concentration fluctuations are a ubiquitous feature of a dispersing plume. The single-particle implementation of the LS-IECM model is based upon a previously reported implementation that used simultaneously computed particle trajectories to estimate the conditional mean concentration field [Cassiani, M. A., Franzese, P. A. and Giostra, U. A.: 2005, A PDF micromixing model of dispersion for atmospheric flow. Part I: development of model, application to homogeneous turbulence and to a neutral boundary layer, Atmospheric Environment 39, 1457-1469]. The model used in this thesis pre-calculates the conditional mean concentration field with an LS model for use with the IECM model, which runs as a separate simulation. The principal advantage of this single-particle approach is the performance increase on parallel computer architecture, which scales directly with the number of processors. The simulations presented in this thesis go beyond those performed with the previous model by considering three-dimensional inhomogeneous flows, as well as one-dimensional horizontally-homogeneous flows. The accuracy of the LS-IECM model was good for the flows with horizontal-homogeneity, and comparable to the results of previous simulations from older models. Rogue velocities in the simulations utilising inhomogeneous flow statistics resulted in acceptable to poor accuracy in these simulations. Suggestions for improvements to the model are made.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Turbulent dispersion
  • Concentration fluctuations
  • Canopy flow

• Graduation date

  Spring 2010

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3319SD4C

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.