Research Projects Supported by
HKU's High Performance Computing Facilities

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Researcher:

Chun-Ho Liu, Assistant Professor (chliu@hkucc.hku.hk)

Project Title:

Air Pollution Physics & Chemistry in the Neighborhood-Scale - An Large-Eddy Simulation Approach

Project Description:
Project Nature
An in-house developed, parallel computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code for the theoretical studies of air pollution physics & chemistry in urban areas.

Project Purpose
  1. Use large-eddy simulation (LES) to examine the coupling between atmospheric turbulence & air pollution chemistry
  2. Use implicit LES & immersed boundary method (IBM) to address the effects of building morphology on the air pollutant transport
  3. Use multi-scale modeliing to investigate the interaction between the large meso-scale atmospheric processes and the small neighborhood-scale meteorological processes.
Project Duration:

3 years

Project Significance:
  1. Turbulent transport plays an important role in the neighborhood-scale momentum, energy & mass transport in urban areas. LES will offer a more accurate platform in that regard compared with the conventional engineering practical turbulence models
  2. Urban morphology is complicated that is a crucual factor affecting the flow & transport processes in urban areas. The conventional LES based on structured mesh would over simplify the urban geometry. The use of implicit LES & IBM will be a means to model the complicated spatial domain more accurately
  3. Turbulent processes at the bottom of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) are greatly affected by the large scales in the core of the ABL. However, simulating both scales simultaneously is currently unaffordable by most computers. The use of multi-scale LES would shade some light in that regard especially the effects of urbanization on the large meso-scale atmospheric processes
Results Achieved:
BACK
rved.