Evaluation of Pedestrian Wind Comfort within the Contemporary Residential Complexes in Palestine

Abstract

One of the main necessities for architects and urban planners is to provide residents with open public spaces that have an adequate thermal comfort conditions and pedestrian wind comfort conditions. Pedestrian wind comfort refers to the comfort level of pedestrians regarding wind speed based on the activities expected in the designed outdoor space. The problem that architects and urban planners face in studying wind comfort is the constant changing in wind behavior according to the local climate and the microclimate. In order to study wind behavior in an urban content, architects and urban planners use tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation software, which may present a prediction of air movement within an urban area. In this thesis, a focused simulation-based study was made on two residential complexes located in Hebron city in Palestine, i.e. King Abdullah Ben Abdul-Aziz residential complex and Al-Nejmeh residential complex, where it aims to evaluate the pedestrian wind comfort level in those residential complexes and analyze the effect of buildings forms and layout on wind speed. Architects and urban planners may enlightened through this evaluation by the illustrated methodology used in this evaluation and the simulation software that maybe beneficial in such studies i.e. Ansys® Discovery Live software. Results showed that some locations in the residential complexes were considered uncomfortable regarding Lawson general wind comfort criteria, the use of vegetation had significantly reduced wind velocity, making all locations within the comfort level.