Computational Wind Engineering (CWE) is becoming more popular in the wind engineering community, for prediction of the wind loads on buildings and structures, by development and validation of numerous turbulence models.

In the similar context, five two-equation turbulence models based on Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) modeling approach were tested for the flow around sharp edged building models using Fluent as the solver. The results were analyzed and the effects of different turbulence parameters used in the modeling and analysis were discussed. Each turbulence model was individually reviewed for the correctness of its predictions and the best model in this set was chosen. This model was further applied to different obstacle geometry in different experimental conditions to minimize the effects of unique experimental condition on analysis.

One of the major problems encountered in the modeling was the type of near wall treatment used for simulation. It was concluded that the standard approach of wall functions was insufficient to estimating the effects of roughness on the wall boundary on the mean flow. A new rough wall model proposed by Durbin et al [58] was implemented using the user defined functions capability of Fluent. This model was applied to the geometries tested in this project to analyze the effects on the rough wall model used for modeling near wall effects. Overall agreement between the computational predictions and experimental findings was acceptable.