Wind flow over sinusoidal hilly obstacles located in a uniform flow

Abstract

The wind flow over two-dimensional sinusoidal hilly obstacles with slope (the ratio of height to half width) of 0.5 has been investigated experimentally and numerically. Experiments for single and double sinusoidal hill models were carried out in a subsonic wind tunnel. The mean velocity profiles, turbulence statistics, and surface pressure distributions were measured at the Reynolds number based on the obstacle height(h=40 mm) of 2.6 x 10(4). The reattachment points behind the obstacles were determined using the oil-ink dot and tuft methods. The smoke-wire method was employed to visualize the flow structure qualitatively. The finite-volume-method and the SIMPLE-C algorithm with an orthogonal body-fitted grid were used for numerical simulation. Comparison of mean velocity profiles between the experiments and the numerical simulation shows a good agreement except for the separation region, however, the surface pressure data show almost similar distributions.