Micro-scale effects over the wind: Modelling flow around buildings with WindSim-Phoenics

This paper shows the methodology applied and results obtained n a project that had the aim of estimating the wind resource on a future enlargement of the Barcelona harbor. The area of study has not very complex topography but is very heterogeneous regarding terrain roughness due to the vicinity of the cty. Since the scenario can be described as non-complex topography, initally the standard package WAsP was used for wind field modeling. Measurements from a particular mast were used because of its proximity to the proposed turbine locations. Unfortunately, this mast was placed on the roof of a building. Therefore, during the modeling process, special are was taken on both the roughness complexity of the landscape and the presence of obstacles. For the former, a detailed double map was used, since the future harbor will be different than what existed during the measurement period. For the latter, a first strategy was to onsider the building withn WAsP by creating an artificial topography around the building, and to use an obstacle model afterwards to consider the effect of small construcons on the roof. The second strategy was to use the CFD-based (Phoenics) software WndSim to evaluate the effects on the flow of both the building and obstacles simultaneously. The building was described upon the numerical grid geometry, by settng some ells as solid. Based on comparisons with a nearby measurement site, results from WndSim-Phoenics method seem to perform better than the classical method. Results show that the effect of the building in modifying the flow was quite small, contrarily to what we previously thought.