Investigation of Pedestrian-Level Wind Environment with Skyline Quantitative Factors

This paper presented a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study on the relationship between skyline quantitative factors and the wind environment. At present, most researches on skyline revealed the changes of skyline quantitative factors on the aesthetic degrees but neglected the influence of the factors on the outdoor wind environment. This paper addresses the gap in using the changing factors for the prediction of outdoor wind speed. It provides a standardized range for aesthetic degrees in the comfortable range of the wind environment and an exact relationship between the factors and the wind environment. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a case study is undertaken on the existing skyline of Qianjiang New City in Hangzhou and extracts the following three skyline quantitative factors in skyline contour: contour tortuosity, building undulation, and skyline rhythm index. The result shows that the proposed range and relationship are ready to provide a quantitative understanding of the skyline under outdoor wind conditions.