The video features wind simulations by SimScale, a revolutionary cloud-based simulation platform for FEA, thermal and CFD simulation. www.simscale.com/
The video is about the Boston Seaport and Architecture, pedestrians and wind. Fort Point Channel separates the seaport from downtown Boston. Thousands of people a day cross from one location to the other for work and recreation. The architecture of the Boston Seaport District is much like any other metropolitan city with parks, restaurants, museums, hotels, and a convention center. What’s unique about the area is the wind. It’s easy for architects and engineers to think about stuff in their wheelhouse like aesthetics or structural conditions. But what about how a new building impacts how a person feels walking through the city, standing outside a building or simply waiting on the street corner for an Uber? The Boston Seaport is exposed to the Boston Main channel and thus get strong winds from the North West that commonly reach 34mph or more. In order to show the real impact of wind for pedestrians a wind speed analysis (assuming 31mph on average) was shared with me by my friends at Simscale. This video shows wind velocity distribution at pedestrian level. The three bridges at the north of fort point channel used by automobiles and pedestrians alike experience wind at nearly free stream velocity due to the absence of any physical barriers. This video shows velocity contours together with velocity vectors. The smaller arrows represent lower wind speeds, and the bigger ones represent higher. You can see that the Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion, at the upper left of this image, is exposed to direct wind. This creates a fresh breeze in the summer (about 18mph. A similar condition also occurs at the Institute of Contemporary Art further north. This video shows velocity streamlines at pedestrian level through the use of fine curved lines and color. Notice the instantaneous gust of wind directly in front of this building caused by converging wind patterns further North and East. This next video shows velocity streamlines in plan view. It highlights phenomena like the Venturi Effect (not Robert Venturi) where wind is squeezed between buildings and accelerates. This happens just behind the Contemporary Art Museum, along Norther Ave and Seaport Blvd. Spiraling Vortices of wind are noticeable at various locations in the video as wind is recirculated or spins off the edge of buildings. In this video you can see how the taller mor,e dense architectural areas at the top of the video block wind flow which generally creates more pedestrian comfort downstream. This video shows a vertical velocity contour and highlights how wind travels over building starting at the Northern end of the Seaport district. This can be valuable in measuring wind downwash over the top of buildings. And in this final series of videos you can see the velocity distribution of wind from the North. Using what’s called a volumetric filter the video shows airflow from a strong breeze (22-30mph) to a moderate gale (30-38mph). Instantaneous gusts of wind of about 33 mph, which can be quite unpleasant to pedestrians, are clear on both Congress Street and Seaport Blvd. So as you can see building design isn’t just about aesthetics or structure, but rather, the impact they have to the physical feel of an environment. The wind analysis videos that make this clear were made by SimScale. SimScale is the market leader in cloud-based engineering simulation. They have 150,000 users worldwide! Simscale is a simulation tool for FEA, CFD and thermal analysis. The website and software they feature enables engineers and architects to run complex simulations and test their designs in minutes. And that’s good for large or small companies that might otherwise never afford to do so. Companies like WSP, Thornton Tomasetti, ARUP, POWER engineers and more use Simscale. All you have to do is sign up and upload your model with a free community account and you’re good to go! Just see the links below in the description box for more.