Building-Resolving Large-Eddy Simulations of Turbulent Flows and Gusty
Winds in Densely Built Urban Districts Under Typhoon Conditions
Abstract
A gusty wind by typhoons is one of the major natural hazards and has
been the most threatening windstorm in urban districts. In recent year
some major cities in Japan have experienced extreme winds during typhoon
landfalls. For example, Typhoon Jebi (2018) caused extreme wind gusts in
Osaka and Kyoto, while Typhoon Faxai (2019) and Hagibis (2019) produced
high winds in Tokyo and neighboring cities. Urban roughness obstacles
exert significant influences on the magnitude of wind gustiness. With
the growing urbanization globally, the quantification of turbulent winds
in densely built, urban districts is important to the assessment and
prediction of risks of wind damages and the understanding of the
underlying physical mechanisms. Influences of densely built urban
environments on the occurrence of wind gusts in urban districts during
the typhoon landfalls are studied by merging mesoscale meteorological
and building-resolving large-eddy simulations (LES), which allows an
explicit representation of the complicated building structures while
retaining the strong mesoscale perturbations from the typhoon. The
actual building data of Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo are used in the
building-resolving LES computational domains. With the successful
reproduction of the track and intensity of the typhoon in meteorological
simulations, the simulated winds at the simulated boundary-layer top are
used to quantify the wind gusts in the urban district. The maximum wind
gust in the analysis area of Osaka during the landfall of Typhoon Jebi
is found to exceed 60 m/s, which is comparable to the wind speed at the
height of about 300 m. Such wind gusts are generated by the
instantaneous downward momentum transfer in areas, where buildings of
great height variability are clustered. The instantaneous wind gusts are
found to be the strongest for moderate building packing density. The
results suggest that the risks of wind damages are mostly likely to be
maximized in urban districts of high building-height variability and
moderate packing density.