Improving Pedestrian Comfort in Quinta Torre with AcuSolve Computational Fluid Dynamics
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
Applicable Industries
- Buildings
- Cement
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Building Automation & Control
- Virtual Reality
Services
- Testing & Certification
About The Customer
The customer for this project was Inmobiliaria Espacio, a company that deals with infrastructure and construction for all types of buildings. Among its other properties, the company owns Torre Espacio in Madrid, which together with the fifth tower are two of the few landmark skyscrapers built in Spain to date. The company in charge of the building design is Fenwick Iribarren Architects, founded in 1990 by the architects Mark Fenwick and Javier Iribarren. In addition to these Spanish projects, Fenwick Iribarren is well known abroad for its involvement on international projects in countries such as China, Dubai, Malaysia, and Morocco.
The Challenge
The construction of the Quinta Torre, a skyscraper in Madrid, presented a unique challenge due to the city's naturally occurring wind loads. These wind loads not only impact the construction of the building but also cause discomfort for pedestrians walking by or staying near the building. The challenge was to predict wind conditions on the ground floor, identify problem areas with potentially stronger wind, and implement counteractive measures in the tower design. Detailed flow studies were required to identify areas of possible discomfort or danger for pedestrians and find optimal design solutions. The project leads needed this information prior to concluding the wind tunnel tests, which could take up to six months.
The Solution
Altair's HyperWorks Suite, solidThinking Compose, and AcuSolve were used to conduct the analyses, including Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis. The simulation used a detailed collection of several years of wind data measurements from the Madrid Barajas airport to estimate the inlet wind speed and turbulence profile. The dimensions of the computational domain were chosen large enough to avoid creating artificial effects in the results. The roughness of the terrain was addressed by an explicit modeling of city buildings and with appropriate wall functions to implicitly model smaller objects such as trees, cars, and streets. Based on the results from the CFD simulation, the Altair engineers estimated the percentage of annual time in which the wind speed exceeded a certain critical value, in the entire pedestrian area. These results identified the critical areas in the original design configuration, allowing for adjustments to attenuate the wind effect in some of these areas.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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