Urban comfort evaluation in an Italian historical district: the impact of architectural details in wind tunnel and CFD analysis

In the present study the impact of the architectural details of the urban texture on the experimental and numerical evaluation of the pedestrian wind comfort is investigated. An Italian historical district, the so-called “Quartiere La Venezia” in Livorno (Italy), was selected as case study where wind tunnel (WT) tests and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed at the same reduced-scale (1:300) and for the same inflow wind direction (WSW). Two types of geometrical CFD models, with different level of simplification with respect to the WT model are herein considered, referred to as the simplified and approximated geometrical models. The CFD results are compared to the WT measurements, in terms of mean wind velocity ratios, at 8 positions of “Piazza del Luogo Pio” in order to understand to which extent the architectural details are important to simulate properly the urban comfort. As far as the mean wind speed ratios between the experimental and both the geometrical CFD models are concerned, the results show not negligible differences.