Large-eddy simulation of plume dispersion under various thermally stratified boundary layers

Abstract. Contaminant gas dispersion in atmospheric boundary layer is of great concern to public health. For the accurate prediction of the dispersion problem, the present study numerically investigates the behavior of plume dispersion by taking into account the atmospheric stability which is classified into three types; neutral, stable, and convective boundary layers. We first proposed an efficient method to generate spatially-developing, thermally-stratified boundary layers and examined the usefulness of our approach by comparing to wind tunnel experimental data for various thermal boundary layers. The spreads of plume in the spanwise direction are quantitatively underestimated especially at large downwind distances from the point source, owing to the underestimation of turbulence intensities for the spanwise component; however, the dependence of the spanwise spreads to atmospheric stability is well represented in a qualitative sense. It was shown that the large-eddy simulation (LES) model provides physically reasonable results.