Parallel computation of atmospheric pollutant dispersion under unstably stratified atmosphere

Abstract

Pollutant dispersion under unstably stratified atmosphere was investigated numerically using the finite element method. The effects of atmospheric stability on plume trajectory were studied using a three-dimensional second-order closure dispersion model. The numerical model was implemented using domain decomposition method and carried out using a parallel computer. The computation accelerates significantly and the size of computation can be largely increased as a result of the parallelism. A passive contaminant point source was placed at the middle of the convective boundary layer to simulate the atmospheric dispersion. The requirement of the input of dispersion coefficients in k-theory and Gaussian models was replaced with direct input of turbulence flow data. It was found that the present numerical model can predict several non-Gaussian plume behaviours and the computed results agreed well with findings from experimental observations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.