Concerning three-dimensional flow past a tall building on flat ground (Q4358075)

The paper is a detailed theoretical study of a three-dimensional flow of an incompressible fluid past a tall thin protuberance in an otherwise locally planar two-dimensional boundary layer at large Reynolds numbers. The focus is on the atmospheric boundary layer in which the wind direction is nearly constant and Earth's rotation and stratification effects can be neglected. The characteristic length, height and width of the building are relevant parameters; the angle of incidence of the incoming ground-boundary layer is assumed zero. There are three major flow regions: (I) a small three-dimensional inviscid perturbation about the original ground-boundary layer velocity profile forced by the scaled building shape; (II) a three-dimensional viscous sublayer beneath region (I) driven by an effective displacement determined by the outer bulk flow, and (III) a near-corner region where nonlinearity effects are important relatively closely to the corner of the building and the ground. The displacement of the viscous sublayer (II) is a combination of the original zero slip velocity profile and the non-zero slip invoked by the inviscid bulk flow properties, and the magnitude of the displacement increases logarithmically in the vicinity of the building's sides. Even small perturbations present at larger scales in regions (I) and (II) can provoke a nonlinear response near the corner.