Atmospheric flow and dispersion through arrays of obstacles

Field experiments have been conducted to investigate flow and dispersion through obstacle arrays.
Model obstacles which represent real structures at a nominal scale between 1/10 and 1/20 were used.
The main purpose of the experiments was to examine flow and dispersion of contaminants in the vicinity
of individual obstacles embedded in an array of cubes. Two array configurations were used, namely
the in-line and staggered array configurations. The field experiments were supported by flow visualisation
trials performed in the wind tunnel. In the light of the results of these wind tunnel trials, the field
experiments were carried out using an array spacing S/H = 1.5 (where S is the space between two consecutive
array elements). Dispersion around an isolated model building has already been investigated
in the field (Mavroidis and Griffiths, 1996). Thus comparison is allowed between dispersion around an
isolated obstacle and around the same obstacle embedded in an array of cubes.