A wind tunnel study on aerodynamic porosity and windbreak drag

Abstract

Natural windbreaks such as trees are very efficient barriers to high velocity winds. The windbreaks exert drag force causing a net loss of momentum and thus disturb the characteristics of flow. The main factors which can affect the efficiency of the windbreaks are tree height, width, tree arrangement, porosity, etc. However, tree porosity which is strongly related to the windbreak drag is very difficult to establish. In this study, the results of a wind tunnel test were introduced to find the aerodynamic porosity and resistance factor of a tree windbreak. Black pine tree (Pinus thunbergii), a typical tree windbreak in Korea was chosen as the experimental tree. With the main factors of wind velocity, static pressure and density of the tree, the aerodynamic porosity as well as the resistance factor of the tree was found. The average porosity at varied tree density were found to be 0.91, 0.69 and 0.42 for one, two and three trees, respectively. The resistance factors which can be equaled to the drag coefficient were 0.55, 0.82 and 1.08 for one, two and three trees, respectively. The determined aerodynamic porosity and windbreak drag will be used later as input data in computer simulation studies such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Moreover, the experimental procedure as well as the use of real trees in the wind tunnel experiment of finding the aerodynamic porosity and windbreak drag of various tree windbreaks was established through this study.