In this study, the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） method is employed to simulate the flow within and over an intersection model with three kinds of k-ε turbulence closure schemes, namely, standard model, renormalization group （RNG） model and realizable k-ε model. The comparison between the simulated and observed flow fields shows that the RANS simulation with all the three turbulence models cannot completely and accurately reproduce the observed flow field in all details. A detailed comparison between the predicted profiles of wind velocities and the measured data shows that the realizble k-ε model is the best one among the three turbulence closure models in general. However, the extent to which the improvement is achieved by the realizable k-ε model is still not enough to completely and accurately describe the turbulent flow in a relatively complex environment.
The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System （RAMS） and the computational fluid dynamics （CFD） codes known as FLUENT are combinatorially applied in a multi-scale numerical simulation of the urban surface layer （USL）. RAMS and FLUENT are combined as a multi-scale numerical modeling system, in which the RAMS simulated data are delivered to the computational model for FLUENT simulation in an offline way. Numerical simulations are performed to present and preliminarily validate the capability of the multi-scale modeling system, and the results show that the modeling system can reasonably provide information on the meteorological elements in an urban area from the urban scale to the city-block scale, especially the details of the turbulent flows within the USL.
