Inner and outer-layer similarity of the turbulence intensity profile over a realistic urban geometry

Inagaki, Atsushi*; Wangsaputra, Y.*; Kanda, Manabu*; Ycel, M.*; Onodera, Naoyuki; Aoki, Takayuki*

SOLA (Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere) (Internet), 16, p.120 - 124, 2020/00

https://doi.org/10.2151/sola.2020-021

The similarity of the turbulence intensity profile with the inner-layer and the outer-layer scalings were examined for an urban boundary layer using numerical simulations. The simulations consider a developing neutral boundary layer over realistic building geometry. The computational domain covers an 19.2 km by 4.8 km and extends up to a height of 1 km with 2-m grids. Several turbulence intensity profiles are defined locally in the computational domain. The inner- and outer-layer scalings work well reducing the scatter of the turbulence intensity within the inner- and outer-layers, respectively, regardless of the surface geometry. Although the main scatters among the scaled profiles are attributed to the mismatch of the parts of the layer and the scaling parameters, their behaviors can also be explained by introducing a non-dimensional parameter which consists of the ratio of length or velocity.