Assessment of the influence of geometrical details on wind-tunnel measurement results by means of CFD

Geometrical wind-tunnel details can have a significant influence on the results of building aerodynamic studies that are conducted in closed-circuit wind tunnels. Investigating these effects by means of wind-tunnel research would require a considerable amount of wind-tunnel tests and important geometrical changes in the wind tunnel, which are time-consuming and expensive. In the present paper, a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) study of the influence of various geometrical details will be performed. As an example, the paper focuses on the Jules Verne wind-tunnel facility in Nantes (France), in which experimental data have been obtained. The entire wind tunnel has been modelled in detail (numerical wind tunnel), whereby the fan has been replaced by a fan boundary condition. The model has been validated for the case of an empty wind tunnel and for the case in which a block-type building is placed in the test section. It will be shown that the numerical wind tunnel can be used to assess the sensitivity of the flow conditions in the test section to different wind tunnel features.