Air flow patterns around a residential closed-shaped building with arches and gaps

The paper studies the properties of wind flow distribution in a closed-shaped residential building of two types: with arches and gaps. It considers the variants of a typical building with a height of 16 floors and two predominant directions of the incoming wind flow. It also presents the results of the numerical modelling of air flow dynamics in Ansys Discovery Live software package and analyses the wind velocity fields inside the courtyard area taken at pedestrian height. A closed-shaped building in terms of wind regime determines the presence of large areas of the territory with reduced wind speeds. The presence of arched openings or gaps significantly improves the comfort of the microclimate of the yard. The percentage of wind-friendly territories inside the courtyard is higher in case of the second variant of block-section layout - with full-fledged gaps for the whole height of the buildings. The paper suggests recommendations for the mutual placement of residential building layout elements and the choice of courtyard landscaping.