Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260

DOI 10.1007/s12273-008-8321-7
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Influence of Cell Geometry and Mesh Resolution on Large Eddy

Simulation Predictions of Flow Around a Single Building

Mohamed M. Hefny1( ), Ryozo Ooka2

1. Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, Kato & Ooka Lab. CW403,
4-6-1 Komaba Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
2. Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Kato & Ooka Lab. CW403, 4-6-1 Komaba Meguro-ku,
Tokyo 153-8505, Japan

Received: 8 May 2008 / Revised: 10 July 2008 / Accepted: 15 July 2008

Tsinghua Press and Springer-Verlag 2008

Abstract A number of research studies have employed a wide variety of test conditions to numerically
assess flow field around buildings. In such studies, the employed mesh system and its resolution played
a crucial role in determining the ultimate degree of solution accuracy. The objective of this study is to
better establish a quantitative assessment of the influence of cell geometry and mesh resolution on the
numerical predictions of large eddy simulation (LES) of the flow field around a single building. In order
to achieve this objective, a number of mesh styles including conventional hexahedral-based mesh,
tetrahedral-based mesh, and prism-based mesh have been considered. In addition, hybrid meshes of
tetrahedron and hexahedron cells are also considered. In each mesh style, four grid resolutions were
investigated: coarse, medium, fine, and very fine. Accuracy of the simulation has been assessed by
applying comparisons to the experimental data available in literature. Moreover, quantitative grid
convergence was calculated based on the grid convergence index, which accounts for the degree of grid
refinement. Future studies are needed to analytically evaluate the influence of cell geometry on the
solution accuracy and to more precisely evaluate other grid system options including various forms of
hybrid configuration meshes.

Keywords cell geometry, numerical accuracy, single building, grid convergence index

1 Introduction used in simple geometries. However, hexahedral-based

With the advent of modern computers, detailed simulation
of flow field around buildings using computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) became possible (Murakami 1990; Shah
and Ferziger 1997). CFD is now routinely employed in
many fields of wind engineering, including computational
wind engineering (CWE). The crucial elements of CFD
are discretization and mesh generation. Consequently, the
determination of a proper grid system and mesh resolution
is an important choice for the accurate prediction of a
complex flow field. At the beginning of CFD development,
orthogonal hexahedral elements were used in the
computational mesh to simplify analysis, and these are still
E-mail: hefny@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
mesh is not always orthogonal because non-orthogonal
hexahedral elements are used in complex geometries.
Generally, generating structured meshes based on orthogonal
hexahedral elements requires significant time and effort;
however, it is claimed that these meshes are associated
with high quality solutions. On the other hand, meshes that
employ tetrahedral elements can be constructed much
faster but may increase the levels of numerical diffusion.
In the same vein, the use of a tetrahedral-based mesh is
expected to rationalize grid distribution which will permit
the use of a significantly smaller number of grid cells than
that required by the hexahedral-based mesh for a similar
near-wall resolution.
To assess the improved total efficiency in CFD solutions
offered by various mesh styles in comparison to the higher
252 Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260

accuracy that is typically associated with conventional both the velocity magnitude and turbulent kinetic energy
hexahedral-based meshes, comparison and validation magnitude between the numerical values (uLES, kLES) and
studies are necessary. This is especially true for most CWE the experimental values (uEXP, kLES) at the same spatial
applications where tetrahedral-based and prism-based location (i) as follows:
meshes are frequently used in order to properly map
complex flow field arising from urban areas. However, ui ,LES ui ,EXP
u =
comparative investigations on the prediction of the ub
accuracy of CFD results using different types of cell (1)
geometries in the computational grid system are hardly ki ,LES ki ,EXP
k =
seen in the literature. Thus, in this paper, large eddy ub2 / 2
simulation (LES) of the flow field around a single building
in a boundary layer is conducted for many mesh systems where ub is the velocity magnitude at the inlet equivalent
under various grid resolutions. The differences among to the height of the building. The root-mean-square of the
these mesh systems and grid resolutions are investigated. relative errors for n locations in the computational domain
Section 2 of this paper presents procedures followed to is used to provide scalar measure of the error as follows:
estimate numerical errors in CFD solutions based on grid 1/ 2
i=n 2
i
convergence index (GCI). Section 3 gives computational
details and results of the LES of a single building in a rms = i =1 (2)
boundary layer and the effect of cell geometry. Finally, n

conclusions are reported in Section 4.
Grid convergence index (GCI ), which is based on the
2 Procedures for estimation of numerical errors
so-called Richardson extrapolation method (RE) (Richardson
1910) and has been suggested by Roache (1994), is
It is expected that higher numerical errors are likely to occur
calculated for each mesh style. The GCI method is an
in cases where non-orthogonal meshes are implemented.
acceptable and straight-forward method that has been
These errors should be investigated and cannot be ignored.
evaluated over several hundred CFD cases. To calculate
Selecting the most appropriate mesh style for a specific
GCI, successive refinements of each mesh style have been
task depends on the time available for mesh construction
considered. For each refinement, grid convergence is
and the required accuracy of the results. However, it is still
evaluated using a relative error measure of both velocity
next to impossible to estimate these errors without relying
and turbulent kinetic energy magnitudes between the
heavily on numerical experiments where the flow problem
coarse and fine solutions,
is solved using different mesh systems.
No standard method for evaluating the numerical ui ,coarse ui ,fine
uncertainty is currently accepted by the CFD community; u =
ui ,fine
however, several methods have been suggested by (3)
many authors where the intricacies, shortcomings, and ki ,coarse ki ,fine
generalization of numerical uncertainty have been widely k =
ki ,fine
investigated. For LES calculations, some methods were
suggested by Geurts and Frhlich (2002) for explicit LES, Relative error values are determined for n consistent
by Celik et al. (2005) and Klein (2005) for implicit LES. points located in the computational domain. The root-
The scope of this paper is devoted to the difference among mean-square of the relative error is used to provide an
different mesh styles without going further into the details initial scalar measure of grid convergence for the points
of the several methods used in determining the numerical considered. It is calculated as follows:
accuracy. The procedures followed in this study depend on
1/ 2
two approaches: first, the comparison to the experimental i=n 2
results available in the literature (the experiment performed i
rms = i =1 (4)
by Uehara et al. (2003) is chosen for comparison) and n
second, the comparison of grid convergence index for

each case.
The numerical errors based on the experimental results In order to incorporate the mesh size and refinement,
are calculated according to the relative error measure of GCI can be applied for the fine grid solution as
Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260
rms
GCI = Fs
r 1
P
where r is grid refinement factor = ( N fine / N coarse )1/ 3 , P is the
order of the discretization method (based on second-order
discretization of all terms in space; P = 2 for the systems
of interest), and Fs is the factor of safety to insure GCI
value equal to rms when r = 2 (thus, Fs = 3 in this case). As
such, the GCI value represents a scaled version of rms to
account for mesh refinement factors lower than 2.
4 Outline of numerical analysis
The flow around buildings is extensively studied in the
literature (Murakami et al. 1987); however, it is worth
mentioning here that the objective of this study is not to
find the best numerical conditions for carrying out LES of
the flow around buildings. Instead, we are concerned with
the differences among the numerical solutions due to using
different mesh styles. Consequently, discretization errors
arising from the mesh style and quality are of interest. As
a result, in order to isolate mesh related discretization
errors, a common solution procedure implemented by a
CFD code has been selected and consistently applied to all
the mesh geometries considered. The unstructured finite
volume scheme is employed for special discretization.
Cell-centered scheme is used here to define control
volumes of each variable (Blazek 2001).
4.1 Computational domain and building size
The analysis object is the flow field around a single
building with the dimensions (b b 2b), where b is the
building width, in a boundary layer. Computational domain
covers 17b (streamwise direction), 13b (lateral direction)
and 6b (vertical direction) (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 Geometry of the building and the computational domain
253
4.2 Mesh styles
(5)
Five commonly implemented mesh styles have been
considered for the generation of a computational solution
for this study, namely, hexahedral-based mesh, tetrahedral
based mesh, prism-based mesh, and hybrid meshes. For
each grid system, four grid resolutions are investigated:
coarse, medium, fine, and very fine grids. More details about
these grid systems are illustrated in Table 1 and Fig. 2. For
all mesh styles considered, refinement of the meshes was
performed to maintain a constant reduction value in the
three coordinate directions. The mesh is stretched in such
way to better resolve regions of significant velocity gradients
near the walls. The stretching process of the mesh is done
using hyperbolic tangent distribution function (Vinokur
1980) which works very well for this flow situation. A
boundary decay of 0.95 is used in all the tetrahedral mesh
cases (the boundary decay factor qualitatively controls
how far into the volumes interior, the boundary cell size
affects the interior tetrahedral cell size). All meshes were
created using the integrated meshing program Gridgen
(Pointwise Inc.).
4.3 Numerical conditions
The SIMPLEC algorithm is employed in order to conserve
mass and couple the pressure to the velocity field. The
scheme is implicit in time, and a second order Crank-
Nicolson scheme is used. Both convective and diffusive
terms are discretized using the second-order central
differencing scheme. The time marching calculations are
begun with the fluid at rest and all geometrical lengths are
scaled with b and physical times with b/ub. A constant time
step is used (t = 0.001 b/ub) and the convergence of the
solution is assumed when the residual is below the default
convergence criteria (10 5). The following boundary
254 Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260

Fig. 2 Configuration of different mesh styles at vertical symmetry plane for (a) hexahedral, (b) tetrahedral, (c) hybrid with near wall
tetrahedron cells, (d) hybrid with near wall hexahedron cells, and (e) prism grid system

Table 1 Details of mesh styles

Number of cells Subdivisions Number of Minimum grid

Cell geometry Mesh resolution
(103 ) (x y z) vertexes spacing

Hexahedron Coarse 75 73 38 30 81,221 0.05b

Intermediate 150 92 48 39 162,780 0.025b
Fine 300 110 62 49 316,729 0.0125b
Very fine 600 126 78 61 625,207 0.00625b
Tetrahedron Coarse 75 14,302 0.05b
Intermediate 150 28,306 0.025b
Fine very fine 300 56,021 0.0125b
Very fine 600 109,147 0.00625b
Prism Coarse 75 39,465 0.05b
Intermediate 150 81,221 0.025b
Fine very fine 300 162,780 0.0125b
Very fine 600 316,729 0.00625b
Hybrid (1) Coarse 75 47,020 0.05b
Intermediate 150 93,060 0.025b
Fine very fine 300 184,080 0.0125b
Very fine 600 364,024 0.00625b
Hybrid (2) Coarse 75 70,524 0.05b
Intermediate 150 150,052 0.025b
Fine 300 298,825 0.0125b
Very fine 600 598,557 0.00625b
Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260
conditions were used: The experimental profile of the
boundary layer is used at the inlet boundary, which is
located 6b units upstream of the building (Uehara et al.
2003), while the inlet turbulence is neglected in order to
simplify the solution and to keep the focus on the effect of
cell geometry. No-slip condition is set for all solid surface
boundaries while free slip condition and periodic condition
are adopted for upper and lateral boundaries, respectively.
At the downstream boundary, the convective boundary
condition is used. The standard type of Smagorinsky model
is used for LES analysis (which utilizes implicit filter).
The Smagorinsky constant, Cs, is set to be 0.1.
4.4 Results and discussion
All flow parameters presented in this section are
nondimensionalized, unless they are explicitly written in
the dimensional form; the buildings width, b, and the
equivalent velocity at building height ub are characteristic
length and velocity, respectively. All mean quantities shown
below were obtained by averaging over a fixed length of
time of 120b/ub after an initial developing time of 20b/ub.
The convergence of the statistics is assessed based on the
moving average and the results of different cell types have
converged in approximately similar manner. However, the
averaging time was fixed and enough to satisfy convergence
for all cases. Hereinafter, values with bracket denote time
averaged quantities.
4.4.1 Stream-wise velocity component, u
Since the stream wise velocity is considered one of the
most important parameters in analyzing the flow field
around a single building, it is used here to monitor the
effect of mesh geometry and resolutions. Figure 3 shows
the time averaged stream-wise velocity, u, with profiles
for hexahedral-based mesh and tetrahedral-based mesh
(other cases are omitted here due to space constraints). It is
clear from Fig. 3 that increasing the grid resolution improved
the solution accuracy for all grid systems. Additionally, the
mesh geometry affected the solution accuracy. However, it
is not an easy task to accurately evaluate the differences
among each grid system by this graphical inspection alone.
Another parameter is still needed. The relative error between
the experimental and computational results for 130 consistent
points located in the computational domain (see Fig. 4)
was calculated for each case using Eq. (4).
Figure 5 shows a comparison for the relative error values
of the time averaged stream-wise velocity component for
all cases. Comparisons of error values among the mesh
styles considered allows for several observations. First, the
hexahedral-based mesh was observed to have error values
255
that were an order of magnitude below all the other meshes
for all resolutions considered. The differences in error values
were in order of magnitude 5% 11% compared to the
tetrahedral-based mesh case. Second, the prism-based
mesh exhibits relatively lower values of errors compared
to the tetrahedral-based mesh. This may be attributed to
lower truncation error because the cell geometry is parallel
to the flow in at least one direction for the prism-based
mesh. The error values of the hybrid grid systems were in
between those of the hexahedral and the tetrahedral cases
as a result of the composition of the mesh and the cells
used.
4.4.2 Turbulence kinetic energy k
The second parameter discussed here is the turbulent
kinetic energy k. In Fig. 6, the values of k are depicted for
orthogonal hexahedral and tetrahedral cases. The effect of
mesh style and grid resolution is clearly seen in the k
profiles compared to the velocity profiles. High discrepancies
are observed, especially for the tetrahedral-based meshes,
behind the building and at the locations of maximum
velocity gradients for each profile shown. Reduced k values
for the tetrahedral meshes likely arise from numerical
diffusion effects that are more prevalent with tetrahedral
elements. However, these discrepancies appear minor for
the very fine resolution case.
Again, a numeral value for the error is still needed in
order to quantitatively differentiate among each mesh style.
The relative errors in k values for all cases are shown in
Fig. 7. A similar trend to the velocity errors is observed
here also. Moreover, the errors of hybrid cases were close
to those of the orthogonal hexahedral and tetrahedral cases.
4.4.3 Grid convergence index
As described above, grid convergence has been based on
comparisons between coarse and fine grid solutions of u
and k at 1000 points distributed around the building.
Selections of other sets of 1000 points, as well as doubling
the number of points considered had a negligible impact on
the grid convergence values reported. Although comparisons
of GCI values among the mesh styles considered allows
for several observations, only general observations will be
mentioned here. Results of this comparison in the form of
relative errors and grid convergence values are reported in
Table 2 and are discussed below.
For the hexahedral-based mesh, successive grid refinements
resulted in a reduction of both the rms and GCI values
based on both k and u. A high quality grid converged
solution is typically assumed for rms values less than 1%
(the equivalent GCI value is 5.1% with adjusting for a grid
reduction factor of r = 1.26). This criterion is satisfied for
256 Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260

Fig. 3 Profiles of u for different locations at symmetry plane with comparison to experimental results (Uehara et al. 2003)
Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260 257

Fig. 4 Locations of experimental measurements in the experiment performed by Uehara et al. (2003)

Table 2 Grid convergence measures for all mesh schemes

Grid size rms (%) GCI (%)

Cell geometry r-Value
(103 ) u k u k
Hexahedron 75 150 1.26 5.21 6.12 26.61 31.26
150 300 1.26 2.11 1.95 10.78 9.96
300 600 1.26 0.82 0.72 4.19 a
3.68a
Tetrahedron 75 150 1.26 8.31 7.32 42.44 37.39
150 300 1.26 6.94 5.21 35.44 26.61
300 600 1.26 4.41 4.21 22.52 21.50
Prism 75 150 1.26 7.62 7.23 38.92 36.93
150 300 1.26 4.68 3.97 23.90 20.28
300 600 1.26 1.95 1.91 9.96 9.75
Hybrid (1) 75 150 1.26 6.41 6.25 32.74 31.92
150 300 1.26 3.14 2.65 16.04 13.53
300 600 1.26 2.42 1.15 12.36 5.87
Hybrid (2) 75 150 1.26 7.52 7.01 38.41 35.80
150 300 1.26 3.95 4.96 20.17 25.33
300 600 1.26 4.31 4.03 22.01 20.58
a
Minimum value for all meshes considered.

the 600103 hexahedral-based mesh where the values of rms

Fig. 5 Relative error values in calculating u for all meshes
and GCI are 0.82% and 4.19% based on u, respectively.
Lower values for both rms and GCI are observed based on
k for the same resolution.
Of the mesh styles considered, the tetrahedral-based mesh
displayed the highest grid convergence values. Minimum
grid convergence value is observed for the fine resolution
mesh comparison of 300 103 600 103 elements resulting
in rms of 4.41% and a GCI of 22.52% (based on u).
These variations in the velocity field are relatively high and
may significantly impact other velocity dependent parameters.
This may be an indication that further refinement is required
258 Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260

Fig. 6 Profiles of k for different locations at symmetry plane with comparison to experimental results (Uehara et al. 2003)
Build Simul (2008) 1: 251 260
Fig. 7 Relative error values in calculating k for all meshes
in order to obtain a more accurate solution. However,
increasing the mesh resolution behind 600 103 cells resulted
in an increase in grid convergence values (not shown here).
Although this behavior is not understood in depth at the
current stage, this increase may be attributed to an upper
limit on mesh resolution associated with the scale of the
flow. Particularly, the idea of GCI oscillation is precluded
because no noticeable improvement is confirmed by
experimental comparison. As such, an upper limit on the
number of tetrahedral cells in the geometry of interest
appears to be on the order of 300 103 600 103 cells.
Further analytical study is needed to clarify this behavior.
Regarding the prism-based mesh, the GCI values for
most grid resolutions were observed to have values in order
of magnitude between the GCI values of the hexahedral-
based mesh and tetrahedral based mesh. The minimum
GCI value for the prism-based meshes was approximately
9.96% at the fine refinement stage (based on u). This is a
clear indication that the grid resolution 600 103 is still
coarse for this grid system. Further refinement beyond
600 103 cells may improve the accuracy of the numerical
simulation provided that the upper limit on the number of
prism elements is not exceeded. Concerning the hybrid
mesh styles, the GCI values are an order of magnitude
lower than those of the hexahedral-based mesh, and higher
than those of the tetrahedral mesh style. The minimum
GCI values based on u for the hybrids (1) and (2) meshes
were approximately 12.36% and 22.01%. This may be
credited to the fact that the content of the hybrid mesh is a
mix between hexahedron and tetrahedron cells. Additionally,
refinement of the hybrid mesh was restricted by the
requirement that the hexahedral surface mesh should match
with the tetrahedral mesh at the common surfaces. Moreover,
hybrid meshes that avoid element transitions and that
allow for better mesh refinement may provide improved
results. Overall, GCI values for the hexahedral-based mesh
259
are approximately an order of magnitude lower than those
of the other mesh styles for all resolutions considered.
5 Conclusions
In this paper, the flow field around a single building is
investigated for different mesh geometries. A quantitative
assessment of the influence of grid resolution and mesh
style on the LES results of flow around a single building is
established. The GCI, which is adopted based on the
Richardson extrapolation method, was shown to be an
effective measure of grid convergence in cases where true
grid halving is not practical. The hexahedral-based mesh
style was shown to provide the best computational solution
based on the lowest GCI values and a high level of agreement
with experimental data. Other mesh styles considered
resulted in much higher GCI values, but still provide a
relatively reasonable agreement with experimentally
observed data. This study found that it does not appear
possible to accurately evaluate grid convergence by
graphical inspection alone, and therefore quantitative
measures of grid convergence such as rms relative error
and GCI values are necessary. This study emphasizes that
when simulating flow fields using unstructured meshes other
than hexahedral-based meshes, success is not guaranteed
simply because LES is applied. Special care must be paid
to the grid system and resolution used as success is very
much dependent on both of these factors. Future studies are
needed to evaluate other grid system options including
various forms of hybrid configuration and non-orthogonal
hexahedral meshes. Finally, the analytical analysis of
the truncation errors of tetrahedral-based meshes is also
needed.
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