Outdoor measurement of wall pressure on cubical scale model affected by atmospheric turbulent flow

Most studies on indoor ventilation have utilized wind-tunnel experiments (WTEs) or computational fluid dynamics based approaches under well-controlled flow conditions. However, the effects of urban boundary layer flow with variable wind directions and various turbulence scales on the ventilation driven by the pressure differences between the upwind and downwind sides of a building within a block array is still under discussion. Therefore, we conducted outdoor experiments at comprehensive outdoor scale model (COSMO) experiment sites in an urban climate to clarify the relationships between the building wall pressure differences and the approaching flow. The pressure coefficients for the outdoor site were comparable with those obtained during previous WTEs. Accordingly, temporal variations in the wind speed and pressure coefficient on the target block were investigated in detail using low-pass filtering operations. The relationships between the filtered wind speed and the pressure differences indicate that the slower temporal variations in the wall pressure showed good agreement with the filtered approaching flow. In addition, the correlation coefficient between the filtered wind speed and the wall pressure differences quantified the apparent coherence between the turbulent flow and the ventilation rate. Furthermore, the statistics of the ventilation rate were determined based on the conventional model to clarify the effects of the turbulent flow on the natural ventilation rate. The ratios between the mean and short-term ventilation rates imply that the short-term ventilation rate presented dramatic temporal fluctuations owing to the various scale turbulence generated by the atmospheric flow. •Simultaneous outdoor measurements of atmospheric flow and wall pressure on a cube.•Temporal variations of filtered wind speed and wall pressure are obviously correlated.•Correlation between wind speed and wall pressure increases with filtering period.•Short-term ventilation rate indicates dramatic variations in natural ventilation.