Publication

Modeling & Simulation, Testing & Validation (MSTV)
2011

Sensitivity Studies on Particle Emissions and Transport Around a Moving Vehicle

by Xiaoling Tong; Edward A. Luke; Robert E. Smith

Abstract

The paper will provide representative simulations of particle transport around a vehicle in order to investigate some of the issues related to the accurate prediction of emission and transport of particles induced by a moving vehicle with a transverse blowing wind. Special treatments in boundary conditions and wall law function are discussed and applied to maintain the shape of atmospheric boundary layer wind velocity profile. For the vehicle, we adopt the geometry of a Nissan Pathfinder SUV to study the effects of vehicle emission and transport around a moving vehicle. We perform a set of simulations to better understand the modeling requirements for dust emissions including a sensitivity study to determine the modeling parameters that are most important for accurate modeling of dust generation and transport. In particular, we study the effects of location, size distribution, and initial velocity distributions of the modeled dust emissions on predicted downwind atmospheric dust distributions.