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:
- The flow tends to skim over the top of the structures with reduced penetration into the canyon region.
- 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.