CFD – Wind Tunnel Testing – Long Lane, London, UK

With vast experience on more than 3,000 projects globally, Windtech has seen firsthand the advantages of Computational Fluid Dynamics, including the opportunities it presents for a more flexible 3D domain as well as staged testing. With a 3D virtual model, it is relatively straightforward to model larger models, plus models can be updated to incorporate design changes or wind mitigation strategies. Furthermore, these strategies can be readily and quickly retested to determine the impact to wind results.

A good example of this was Windtech’s approach on the Long Lane project, which is a proposed development located just south of the river in London, close to Borough station. Should a standard wind tunnel test in a 2.5m cross-section wind tunnel have been undertaken at 1:300 scale, the proximity model would extend to a radius of 375m. However, in the CFD model, it was easy to include the wind interference impacts of significant structures outside of this 375m radius, like The Shard, which stands at 309m to the north of the site.

The globally recognised Lawson’s Comfort Criteria was used to assess ground level and terrace conditions on this landmark development. Wind speed measurements were made at selected critical trafficable outdoor locations within and around the Proposed Development from 16 wind directions using a 1:1 scale detailed model.

A mitigation plan was developed in consultation with the development team to alleviate the adverse wind conditions and a wind mitigation test configuration was then carried out to ascertain the effectiveness of the mitigation plan. Results from this retest were produced quickly and the mitigation measures were shown to improve the wind conditions as expected.

The strategy employed in this project, to use computational fluid dynamics as an effective, fast, and robust method for incorporating wind mitigation, is only possible thanks to the methodologies used by Windtech which include a high level of automation. Regular validation against wind tunnel testing is an essential part of making CFD an effective tool and our continuous investment in research can give you confidence that Windtech is always at the forefront of the wind engineering industry in both wind tunnel testing and computational fluid dynamics.