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A first‐order closure for diturbed plant‐canopy flows, and its application to winds in a canopy on a ridge
Author(s) -
Wilson John D.,
Finnigan John J.,
Raupach Michael R.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49712454704
Subject(s) - canopy , closure (psychology) , turbulence , turbulence kinetic energy , ridge , atmospheric sciences , flow (mathematics) , dissipation , tree canopy , turbulence modeling , mechanics , meteorology , mathematics , environmental science , geology , physics , thermodynamics , geography , paleontology , archaeology , economics , market economy
To calculate disturbed wind flows in plant canopies, we studied a variant of the K α λ k 1/2 first‐order closure (where K is the eddy viscosity, k is the turbulent kinetic energy calculated from its simplified governing differential equation, and λ is an algebraic length‐scale). We compare numerical solutions using this closure (which admits only three empirical constants) with earlier obervations of mean wind, shear stress, and turbulent kinetic energy in three, quite different, uniform canopy flows, and in disturbed canopy flow over a ridge. The closure performs as well as or better than the solutions of others based on modifications of the ‘ k ‐ϵ’ closure, where ϵ is the rate of dissipation of k .