Urban microclimate
Urban microclimate and pedestrian wind comfort simulation
Wind at ground level around buildings, the boundary layer that study has to be run inside, and the dispersion of exhaust and pollutants across a site. The comfort workflow depends entirely on the inflow being right, which is why the boundary layer is its own case type rather than an inlet condition you improvise.
Questions this answers
- Is it comfortable to stand and to sit at ground level here?
- Where does wind accelerate between or around these buildings?
- What does a proposed massing change do to the ground-level wind?
- Where does an exhaust plume go across this site?
- What is the wind doing across this site by direction?
The analysis types that do it
Each of these is a case type in the application, not a configuration you assemble. Every one runs in the free build — the free tier limits mesh size and cores, never which physics you may use.
Backends underneath
simpleFoampimpleFoamreactingFoam
Open-source solvers, selected and configured from the case type. You can still read every dictionary the application writes.
When it will not fit on your machine
Paid accounts can send meshing and solving to SHD Cloud and keep working locally. The estimate is shown before the run starts.
What this does not do
- Comfort results are reported as the wind statistics behind a criterion, not as a pass mark against a named local standard.
- No weather-file or wind-rose automation — directions are cases you set up.
- Thermal comfort indices that combine radiation, humidity and metabolic rate are not computed.
Naming a sector here says the physics suits the work. It is not a claim that anyone in it is a customer.