Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations

Hazardous weather, turbulence, wind, and thermals pose a ubiquitous challenge to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and electric-Vertical Take-Off and Landing (e-VTOL) aircrafts, and the safe integration of UAS into urban area requires accurate high-granularity wind data especially during landing and t...

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Main Authors: Mounir Chrit, Marwa Majdi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2022-01-01
Series:Advances in Meteorology
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/2629432
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author Mounir Chrit
Marwa Majdi
author_facet Mounir Chrit
Marwa Majdi
author_sort Mounir Chrit
collection DOAJ
description Hazardous weather, turbulence, wind, and thermals pose a ubiquitous challenge to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and electric-Vertical Take-Off and Landing (e-VTOL) aircrafts, and the safe integration of UAS into urban area requires accurate high-granularity wind data especially during landing and takeoff phases. Two models, namely, Open-Source Field Operation and Manipulation (OpenFOAM) software package and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, are used in the present study to simulate airflow over Downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. Results show that computational fluid dynamics wind simulation driven by the atmospheric simulation significantly improves the simulated wind speed because the accurate modeling of the buildings affects wind patterns. The evaluation of different simulations against six Micronet stations shows that WRF-CFD numerical evaluation is a reliable method to understand the complicated wind flow within built-up areas. The comparison of wind distributions of simulations at different resolutions shows better description of wind variability and gusts generated by the urban flows. Simulations assuming anisotropy and isotropy of turbulence show small differences in the predicted wind speeds over Downtown Oklahoma City given the stable atmospheric stratification showing that turbulent eddy scales at the evaluation locations are within the inertial subrange and confirming that turbulence is locally isotropic.
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spelling doaj-art-71f5bb960ad344aab11e26d4a0bf55e02025-02-03T06:08:43ZengWileyAdvances in Meteorology1687-93172022-01-01202210.1155/2022/2629432Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled SimulationsMounir Chrit0Marwa Majdi1Department of Atmospheric SciencesDepartment of Atmospheric SciencesHazardous weather, turbulence, wind, and thermals pose a ubiquitous challenge to Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and electric-Vertical Take-Off and Landing (e-VTOL) aircrafts, and the safe integration of UAS into urban area requires accurate high-granularity wind data especially during landing and takeoff phases. Two models, namely, Open-Source Field Operation and Manipulation (OpenFOAM) software package and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, are used in the present study to simulate airflow over Downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. Results show that computational fluid dynamics wind simulation driven by the atmospheric simulation significantly improves the simulated wind speed because the accurate modeling of the buildings affects wind patterns. The evaluation of different simulations against six Micronet stations shows that WRF-CFD numerical evaluation is a reliable method to understand the complicated wind flow within built-up areas. The comparison of wind distributions of simulations at different resolutions shows better description of wind variability and gusts generated by the urban flows. Simulations assuming anisotropy and isotropy of turbulence show small differences in the predicted wind speeds over Downtown Oklahoma City given the stable atmospheric stratification showing that turbulent eddy scales at the evaluation locations are within the inertial subrange and confirming that turbulence is locally isotropic.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/2629432
spellingShingle Mounir Chrit
Marwa Majdi
Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
Advances in Meteorology
title Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
title_full Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
title_fullStr Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
title_full_unstemmed Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
title_short Improving Wind Speed Forecasting for Urban Air Mobility Using Coupled Simulations
title_sort improving wind speed forecasting for urban air mobility using coupled simulations
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2022/2629432
work_keys_str_mv AT mounirchrit improvingwindspeedforecastingforurbanairmobilityusingcoupledsimulations
AT marwamajdi improvingwindspeedforecastingforurbanairmobilityusingcoupledsimulations