Urban Planning: Pollution of a Street between Buildings

Description

This project uses ANSYS Fluent to simulate air pollutant dispersion in a street canyon between buildings, applying species transport modeling to a core urban planning and environmental engineering problem. Building geometry strongly influences how pollutants accumulate or disperse in urban street canyons, making this analysis relevant to air quality management and sustainable city design.

Methodology

A 3D street canyon and building geometry is built in DesignModeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing using a structured grid of 274,496 elements. The simulation uses a pressure-based, steady-state, incompressible solver, with the Species Transport model configured to track pollutant dispersion. Gravitational effects and appropriate boundary conditions are applied to represent realistic urban airflow.

Conclusion

Results include pressure, velocity, and pollutant concentration contours, characterizing how airflow patterns between buildings drive pollutant accumulation or dispersion. The analysis evaluates pollutant concentration at different locations within the urban setting, revealing how street canyon geometry and building configuration affect local air circulation and air quality — insights relevant to urban planning, traffic emissions assessment, and sustainable city design.