Abstract
Most existing cities were not designed to exploit wind and air displacement phenomena to ensure pollutant dilution and enhance the effectiveness of natural ventilation of the built environment. Although this problem is well known in the literature, the majority of previous studies focused on real case studies or on parametric layouts often characterized by high-rise buildings, which are not typical for most Italian and European cities. In this framework, the goal of this research was to perform a preliminary CFD parametric study on street canyons with low- and medium-rise buildings, focusing on the different parameters impacting outdoor air displacement in an urban layout. Seven different configurations of street canyon were simulated with ANSYS Fluent, focusing on the air displacement around a low-, medium- or high-rise target building, located at the beginning, at the end, or in the middle of the street canyon, respectively. The velocity and pressure contour plots were analysed to understand the behavior of airflow around the buildings in the different configurations, discussing in such a way the natural ventilation potential.