Numerical modeling of gas dispersion from a large multifunctional stadium in an urban environment and validation with full-scale measurements

Knowledge of the efficiency of contaminant removal from buildings is important with regard to indoor air quality and comfort and health of the occupants. In naturally ventilated buildings, contaminants produced inside the building should be removed by wind and/or buoyancy. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be applied to analyze natural ventilation by modeling the interaction between outdoor wind flow and indoor air flow. This paper presents transient CFD simulations with species modeling to reproduce CO2 gas removal from a large semi-enclosed stadium by means of natural ventilation. The simulation, in which both the decay of air temperature and water vapor concentration are incorporated, shows a good agreement with full-scale measurements of CO2 concentration decay, made after three concerts on three consecutive evenings, when the indoor CO2 level had reached its maximum. Further research will include sensitivity analysis of CFD indoor dispersion and natural ventilation simulations to the wide range of computational parameters involved.