The video features wind simulations by SimScale, a revolutionary cloud-based simulation platform for FEA, thermal and CFD simulation. https://www.simscale.com/
This video is about London’s Walkie Talkie building and the world below. Up until the mid 20th century the impact of tall buildings wasn’t even a thought in the minds of Londoners. But recently tall buildings have begun to change the way the English think about their city, specifically, pedestrian comfort. In fact, tall buildings, because of their size, create what’s called microclimates. And these microclimates, which are simply ground level climatic conditions in close proximity to the building, can be dangerous because of conditions like intense wind, heat and glare. As of 2014, 20 Fenchurch Street, nicknamed the Walkie Talkie Building, has been the subject of much discussion. The building was designed by Rafael Vinoly and takes on the shape of a typical office building that’s been made curvaceously top heavy. The 38 story building features a three story sky garden at the top. Although quite functional as an office tower the buildings aesthetics and neighborly impact have been a subject of much debate. The public skygarden, originally used as an altruistic selling point by developers, is open only briefly during the day. Another big issue was solar glare. And before the situation was remedied with solar shades a sunny day and the buildings curved reflective facade could produce heat hot enough to cook an egg and damage parked cars below. And to top it off the building also creates turbulent winds at street level. This simulation is a color coded animation that visualizes the average wind velocity at pedestrian level from one direction during a 250 second period. The animation identifies in red higher wind velocities generated by a downdraught effect at the side of the building which then becomes an accelerated flowstream around the corner. This acceleration of wind is what’s referred to as the cornering effect. The next animation creates a visual representation of the downdraft effect. The Walkie Talkie building is considerably higher than surrounding buildings. In this case the structure redirects air from the east which generates a downdraft flow that increases wind velocity and creates a vortex at street level. And in this animation we see that wind passing over the lower building to the east creates a flow stream between Rood and Philpot lane. The combination of the downdraught, cornering and channeling effects combine and generate a zone of high wind velocities at the building’s lower level. Winds like this over 8 meters per second adversely affect pedestrians’ comfort. 20 Fenchurch and other tall buildings like it have been a catalyst for the City of London to ensure that developers create a comprehensive assessment of a new building’s impact on pedestrians. In fact, strong winds in London have actually knocked over pedestrians and cyclists alike. A phenomena likely due to the remnant of narrow medieval streets and modern tall buildings. These cloud-based simulations are brought to you by my friends at SimScale. SimScale offers a wide range of engineering simulation capabilities, from fluid dynamics and structural analysis to conjugate heat transfer. I love this technology because the community plan is completely free and for a small business like mine I can get amazing simulations that blow my clients minds. One of SimScale’s flagship products is wind comfort simulation, a powerful computational program that captures transient effects of wind such as vortices, channeling, and other gust phenomena. Simulations can be performed on a small scale such as one building or an entire city district. The simulations allow architects, urban planners or structural engineers to rapidly observe, assess and address issues about comfort, safety and the environmental impact designs. SimScale analysis can easily be performed from a web browser. It uses the power of cloud computing and has the capability to run vast design scenarios. Companies like WSP, Thornton Tomasetti, Meinhardt, Arcadis, Power engineers and more use SimScale. All you have to do is sign up and upload your model with a free community account to try the tool out with no risk! Just see the links below in the description box for more. I’m Doug Patt. We’ll see you next time.
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