Research Article

Experiment Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Snowdrift on a Typical Large-Span Retractable Roof

Table 6

Computation conditions.

ConditionsSettings

Computational domain850 m(x)  250 m(y)  60 m(z) (the building was located at 1/3 away from the entrance of airflow)

Number of elementsApproximately 4,800,000

Minimum mesh size0.35 m

Inflow boundaryWind velocity profile (see equation (7)), where and z0 are 11.4 m/s and 6 m, respectively
Snow fraction profile (see equation (8))

Outflow boundaryZero gradient condition, the wind velocity gradient ∂u/∂n and snow fraction gradient ∂f/∂n are set to zero (outflow)

Upper face and sideZero gradient condition for all variables, and the normal components of the wind velocity with respect to the boundaries are set to zero (symmetry)

Building and ground surfaceNo-slip boundary condition (wall), except that the wall roughness z0 = 5.0 × 10−5 for the snow surface

Turbulence modelRealizable k-ε model

Multiphase modelMixture model

Residual10–7