EPSRC logo

Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L91085/01
Title: MODELLING THE EFFECT OF BUILDING GEOMETRY ON VEHICLE EXHAUST DISPERSION AT CITY STREET INTERSECTIONS
Principal Investigator: Colvile, Dr R
Other Investigators:
Apsimon, Professor H Robins, Emeritus Prof. A
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Department of Earth Sciences
Organisation: Imperial College London
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 August 1997 Ends: 31 December 1998 Value (£): 50,558
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Urban & Land Management
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Buildings alongside roads trap air pollution from vehicle exhaust and influence air pollution concentrations profoundly. The new UK National Air Quality Strategy increases the need for detailed undertanding of these effects, to facilitate effective air quality management. Increased fundamental understanding of air quality will also benefit the design of new buildings and roads. City street networks are made up of three-dimensional intersections joined by two-dimensional street canyons. The two-dimensional case has been studied extensively, and simple parametrizations exist describing the marked spatial variation in air pollutant concentrations as a function of building height and separation. The three-dimensional case is much more complicated, and important because of pollution hot-spots near junctions. Computer codes simulating air flow and tubulence in such situations are now available. Their performance, however, depends greatly on how computational models are configured and run. This proposal is to combine computational fluid dynamics simulations with wind tunnel measurements to study three-dimensional street canyon intersections. Flow sensitivity to building, street and wind direction parameters will be investigated in order to draw general conclusions about pollutant concentrations and computational model performance, that can be applied to real situations.
Key Findings
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Potential use in non-academic contexts
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Summary
Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Project URL:  
Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.imperial.ac.uk