Numerical simulation of the three-dimensional micro-scale dispersion of air-pollutants in regions with complex topography

 A computational method for predicting the dispersion of gaseous emissions in regions with complex topography is presented. Different meteorological conditions, source data, and gas compositions and specific weights are taken into consideration. The three-dimensional governing equations of fluid- and thermodynamics are numerically solved by means of the finite volume method. The kɛ turbulence model is utilized to account for the turbulent nature of the flow. The numerical results obtained by the proposed method show satisfactory agreement with both results obtained by other numerical methods and experimental and/or measured data. The presented method is applied to four test cases, including steady and unsteady problems, in order to illustrate its usefulness. Received on 1 March 2001