Thesis 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)