Turbulence is a significant factor in near-road air quality, as it affects the initial dilution, dispersion, and the ultimate fate of pollutants. This study used computational fluid dynamics simulations to model the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) on roadways, focusing on vehicle-induced turbulence. TKE was shown to decay with different power-law exponents depending on vehicle types; vehicle speeds and winds affect TKE; and thermal impacts are negligible. It was found that TKE is superimposed for vehicles in series; TKE does not dissipate far laterally, and the side-by-side interactions are not significant regardless of the directions. Thus, TKE for different traffic compositions may be expressed as a sum of the contribution from each type of vehicle. Insights gained in this study may enable the quantification of TKE for various traffic scenarios based on TKE values of single vehicle of different types, and simplify the TKE estimations in regional air quality models.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/31283 |
| Date | 12 December 2011 |
| Creators | Kim, Yesul |
| Contributors | Jia, Charles Q., Gong, Sunling |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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