Comparison Between a Building Resolving Micro-Meteorogical Model and Measurements at SIRTA

This numerical work presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to simulate wind flow over complex site SIRTA which is located in Palaiseau, 20 km south of Paris (France) in a semi urban environment. The purpose is to study the ability of an atmospheric CFD model (Code_Saturne) to reproduce the micro scale heterogeneities of wind and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), using a 16 month data set collected at SIRTA site. The forested areas were modeled either according to the classical roughness law or with a drag porosity model, in which trees effects are modeled with additional terms in momentum, TKE and dissipation rate equations. The results obtained in this work show that the drag porosity model represents well the special heterogeneities of the site and gives results much closer to experimental results than the classical roughness law in the sector where the influence of forested areas is predominant.