Skimming flow visualization

Skimming flow is a typical flow regime observed between compact geometric structures. In an urban setting, skimming flow can be observed in a region known as a street canyon i.e. a region bordered by two adjacent buildings. The main characteristics of skimming flow are:

1. The flow tends to skim over the top of the structures with reduced penetration into the canyon region.
2. The flow circulation with lower velocity is present within the canyon region.

The following figures show the skimming flows produced in Paraview – an open-source application for flow analysis and visualization. The flows were simulated using the RANS k-epsilon model with a power-law inlet velocity. To compute the solution, the steady-state approach was applied using the simpleFoam solver.