An open-source solver for coupled physical processes modeling urban microclimate based on OpenFOAM.
urbanMicroclimateFoam is a multi-region solver consisting of an air subdomain together with subdomains for porous urban building materials. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model solves the turbulent, convective air flow and heat and moisture transport in the air subdomain. A coupled heat and moisture (HAM) transport model solves the absorption, transport and storage of heat and moisture in the porous building materials. A radiation model determines the net longwave and shortwave radiative heat fluxes for each surface using a view factor approach.
| Daily variation of surface temperature in a street canyon | Daily variation of air temperature and wind speed at pedestrian height in Münsterhof, Zürich. |
|---|---|
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The solver is tested for the following OpenFOAM versions:
- OpenFOAM-org (OpenFOAM Foundation) v6, v7, v8
You can compile the solver for a specific OpenFOAM version by checking out the commit with corresponding tag. For example, for OpenFOAM v8:
git clone https://github.com/OpenFOAM-BuildingPhysics/urbanMicroclimateFoam.git
cd urbanMicroclimateFoam
git checkout tags/of-org_v8.0
./Allwmake
See the list of tags for different versions here
Read urbanMicroclimateFoam wiki for documentation.
Tutorial case for the solver can be found here.
More information at the Chair of Building Physics: https://carmeliet.ethz.ch


