Abstract
Wind speed in urban areas decreases from the roughness of the buildings but the friction of the ground produces turbulence affects the occupants and creates a lot of times unpleasant and dangerous environment resulting in non- use of urban spaces, widely known as wind funnel effect. Both when designing a new urban space as well as when analyzing an existing built environment, a knowledge of wind pressures, speed, acceleration are often required to allow the prediction of “well-use” and locate problematic areas. This thesis investigates the capabilities of tensegrity systems as an extra layer of built environment, in order to mitigate the wind funnel effect in urban canopies improving pedestrian wind comfort criteria. To analyze this phenomenon, Fast Fluid Dynamic (FFD) simulation environment is implemented. Tensegrities are optimized in unit level using Genetic Algorithms (GA) in order to find optimum unit to mitigate wind flow. Tensegrity units are then populated within a simulated problematic area and various spatial arrangements are tested to optimize results. The experiments and tests focus in one of the most problematic areas, the passage between two parallels buildings and the simulation take place in three-dimensional space. Results + Contribution (Placeholders to include)
Wind speed in urban areas decreases from the roughness of the buildings but the friction of the ground produces turbulence affects the occupants and creates a lot of times unpleasant and dangerous environment resulting in non- use of urban spaces, widely known as wind funnel effect. Both when designing a new urban space as well as when analyzing an existing built environment, a knowledge of wind pressures, speed, acceleration are often required to allow the prediction of “well-use” and locate problematic areas. This thesis investigates the capabilities of tensegrity systems as an extra layer of built environment, in order to mitigate the wind funnel effect in urban canopies improving pedestrian wind comfort criteria. To analyze this phenomenon, Fast Fluid Dynamic (FFD) simulation environment is implemented. Tensegrities are optimized in unit level using Genetic Algorithms (GA) in order to find optimum unit to mitigate wind flow. Tensegrity units are then populated within a simulated problematic area and various spatial arrangements are tested to optimize results. The experiments and tests focus in one of the most problematic areas, the passage between two parallels buildings and the simulation take place in three-dimensional space. Results + Contribution (Placeholders to include)