Improved computational models for wind engineering

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results are presented here for the flow around a three dimensional 6m surface mounted cube in an atmospheric boundary layer. Results have been obtained for five turbulence models both with low and high order convective differencing using the CFD package CFX. Cube orientations normal and skewed at 45° to the incident wind have been analysed and comparisons are given with parallel full-scale experiments undertaken at the Silsoe Research Institute. Results are offered which clearly show the difficulties encounted in undertaking numerical analysis of Wind Engineering flowfields when using the conventional turbulence models and point to more accurate turbulence modelling techniques that can be used.