Table 3 Findings concerning LES in the literature for low-rise buildings

• The mean and root mean square (rms) pressures concur well with those from the experimental data for a half height cube with turbulent inflow using LES.

• Underestimation of peak pressures near the edge is observed.

• The identified reasons are shorter duration of data collection, small integral length scale, and numerical damping caused by adoption of upwind scheme.

[111]

• Mean and peak surface pressures on single-span greenhouse buildings of different roof slopes and radius of curvatures were predicted using LES.

• The observations were later compared with previously done RANS simulations ([131]) and corresponding wind tunnel experiments.

• Improved mean pressures are observed from LES compared to RANS simulations.

• The mean pressures from LES closely agree with those from the experiments.

• The peak pressures also concur with the experimental counterparts with some localized discrepancies.

• Overall, LES was concluded to produce reasonable peak pressures as well.

[132]

• LES can produce accurate unsteady aerodynamic pressures on isolated buildings when realistic wind flow is generated near the buildings’ location.

• The proposed RFG technique can produce realistic inflow at lower computation cost compared to precursor simulation, recycling, and other techniques.

• The turbulence intensity at the inlet needs to be adjusted to obtain desired intensity at the zone of interest.

[52]

• LES is employed to ascertain the mean and peak pressures on a 1/200 model of a gabled-roof low-rise building.

• Later, the obtained results were compared with previously conducted wind tunnel experiments.

• The mean surface pressures had better correspondence to wind tunnel counterparts, whereas the peak pressures were underestimated by LES simulations.

[133]

• LES was employed on a 1:1 scale of the TTU experimental building to study the mean and peak pressures.

• The mean surface pressures were in desirable agreement with the full-scale counterparts.

• Also, highly encouraging peak pressures were obtained from LES with minor deviations from full-scale measurements.

• This study also contributed to the best practice guidelines of CFD LES for wind engineering applications.

[75]

• Flow behavior around low-rise buildings of different shapes was investigated using PIV wind tunnel experiments and 3D LES.

• LES can reproduce time-averaged, RMS velocities and vortices that are consistent with the experimental findings depending on the geometric shapes of roofs.

• LES predictions for flat roofs are more accurate compared to roofs of complex geometries.

[134]

• Mean pressure distributions on gable-roof low-rise buildings of variable roof pitches were investigated.

• Higher suction was observed for lower roof pitch; in other words, flat roofs are more vulnerable during powerful windstorms.

• LES has better predictive ability of near-structure wind field and mean localized surface pressures compared to RANS; however, it is obtained at the expense of 80 times higher computational cost.

[135]

• The cited study presented some best practice guidelines for RANS and LES simulations concerning the following: numerical settings, turbulence model, numerical discretization, and computational domain.

• LES is essential for accurate estimation of wind loads and predicting peak values.

[87]

• The treatment of flow over complex geometries and/or treating flow of high Re are identified as challenging tasks for LES.

[94]

• The cited study reviewed the prominence of LES in investigating flow around buildings till 2008.

• For a wide range of avenues of building aerodynamics, including estimation of surface pressures, LES has demonstrated to produce reasonable results based on wind tunnel experiments.

• However, to establish LES as a stand-alone tool, the findings need to be validated with full-scale measurements.

[95]