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2330123 
Journal Article 
Evaluation of Reynolds stress, k-epsilon and RNG k-epsilon turbulence models in street canyon flows using various experimental datasets 
Koutsourakis, N; Bartzis, JG; Markatos, NC 
2012 
0 
Environmental Fluid Mechanics
ISSN: 1573-1510 
12 
4 
379-403 
WOS:000306338500006 
In this study the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics methodology is used, which has proved to be a powerful tool for the simulations of the airflow and pollutant dispersion in the atmospheric environment. The interest is focused on the urban areas and more specifically on the street canyons, several types of which are examined in order to evaluate the performance of various turbulence models, including a Reynolds-stress model and variations of the k-epsilon model. The results of the two-dimensional simulations are compared with measurements from a diversity of independent street canyon experimental datasets, covering a wide range of aspect ratios, free stream velocities and roughnesses. This way more general and reliable conclusions can be reached about the applicability, accuracy and ease of use of each turbulence model. In this work, the renormalization group k-epsilon presented better results in most cases examined, while the Reynolds-stress model did not stand up for the expectations and also exhibited convergence problems. 
Urban street canyons; CFD modelling; Turbulence models evaluation; Experimental datasets; Reynolds-stress model; RNG k-epsilon