Investigation of the Reynolds number independence of cavity flow in 2D street canyons by wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulations

Abstract The Reynolds number independence (Re independence) criterion of Re > 11,000 is widely adopted to fulfill the dynamic similarity between the urban flow modeling and the down-scale measurements. However, for 2D street canyons with H/W ≥ 1.5, experiments, numerical simulations, and in-situ observations have reported different vortex-flow regimes with similar building configurations but at different scales. This study uses both wind tunnel experiments and numerical simulations to revisit the Re-independent flow regimes and Re independence criteria with an extensive Re range for idealized 2D street canyons with various aspect ratios (H/W = 1.1, 2.4, 3, 4, and 5). We introduced an optimized ratio of relative changes (RRCs) to evaluate the flow regimes’ similarity. The wind tunnel experiment confirms that the cavity flow with H/W = 1.1 meets the Re independence when reference building Re (Reref) exceeds 11,000. Simulations validated by the experiment results are conducted to investigate detailed flow regimes and the critical Re (Rec) range for each aspect ratio. The canyons with H/W = 2.4, 3, and 4 are dominated by a single asymmetric vortex when the Re independence is satisfied, while there are two vertically-stacked counter-rotating vortices in the canyon with H/W = 5. The value range of Rec increases with aspect ratio from 1.9×104–2.6 × 104 (H/W = 2.4) to 1.3×105–2.1 × 105 (H/W = 3), and 2.1×106–6.4 × 106 (H/W = 4 and 5). Our results indicate that the fully Re-independent flow regimes in deep canyons have fewer vortices than the literature value with down-scale experiments and simulations. The variant Rec with different aspect ratios suggests the requirement to conduct the Re-independence test for different model configurations.