The amount of the urban flow studies has been excessively increased during past decade. Pollutant dispersion quality has been the main... Show moreThe amount of the urban flow studies has been excessively increased during past decade. Pollutant dispersion quality has been the main motivation in these investigations. Besides, a more recent goal is to provide a spatial map of the flow distribution which can be used for micro aerial vehicles (MAV) flight control. These all have developed advanced methodologies in both computational and experimental researches. In this study flow distribution and characteristics are investigated in a 7×5 urban array model (blocks are representing buildings) in a low-speed wind tunnel. Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) is employed as the velocimetry method to acquire three-dimensional velocity filed in the three-dimensional region of street areas. A large amount of SPIV data was acquired in four consecutive streets for four wind incidence angle. The evolution of the three-dimensional coherent structures is investigated. Also, flow characteristics are studied using parameters such as mean velocity, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), vorticity magnitude and Reynolds stress tensor components. All flow characteristics are studied in four consecutive streets of the array. Also, the effects of the wind direction on the flow characteristics and arch vortex location are studied. A valuable achievement of this study is to suggest a method to find the location of the arch vortex legs, and find the angle between the arch horizontal axis with the spanwise direction (𝜑). It is shown that this angle is increasing significantly in variation of angle of incidence (AOI) in the range of 𝐴𝑂𝐼=0° to 𝐴𝑂𝐼=15°. The rate of increment of 𝜑 is much slower between 𝐴𝑂𝐼=15° and 𝐴𝑂𝐼=30° but the 𝜑 range is still greater than AOI. Existence of geometrical symmetry in 𝐴𝑂𝐼=0° case, brings unique features for this condition such as zero spanwise flow velocity in streets.. Increasing AOI to higher magnitudes will cause severe change in flow distribution and turbulence level, in the sense that turbulence intensity starts to impoverish. M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, December 2014 Show less
