Simulation and verification of influence of different street vegetation structure on diffusion of atmosphere particulates

As the city is developing continuously recently, frequently occurred haze has increasingly raised residents' concerns about the urban ecological problems. Motor vehicle exhaust gas is one of the major sources of atmospheric particulates. The road green system, an important ecological measurement, which plays a significant role in preventing the motor vehicle exhaust gas diffusion, is of great significance to improve urban air quality and residents' life quality and the living environment. For the purpose of urban road greening plan, we used high resolution remote sensing images and street views to compile the road information tables so as to select six roads (Baiziwan Road, Linda North Road, Jiaodaokou East Avenue, Dongzhimen North Street, and Nongzhanguan South Road) in Beijing city as the sample set which represent different road green systems, green configurations and street aspect ratios. For the simulation experiment in this paper, we used three-dimensional microclimate software ENVI-met, which was based on fluid and thermodynamics (the calculation of the basic law of the fluid dynamics model), to simulate the interaction processes among ground, vegetation, building and atmosphere in a small-scale urban space. We constructed three-dimensional main model area and set main characteristic parameters of the sample places, such as building, greening and underlying surface structure, and achieved the numerical simulation of interactions among ground, vegetation, building and atmosphere by using the weather prediction subprogram to analyze governing equation. We conducted field experiment in order to compare it with the numerical simulation results. The monitoring points were set on the roadside and behind the tree respectively. Each experiment street was set with one monitoring section which has two monitoring points at the height of 1.5 meters. We selected PM10 as the monitoring item and measure meteorological factors such as wind speed, wind direction and temperature at the same time. We set the results of the non-vegetation particulate matter as background value and superposed it with the diffusion of that under different green configurations to analyze the law of particulate matter diffusion of different green configurations. The simulation results showed that, under the same condition of wind speed and wind direction, the changes of PM10 concentration on the leeward side of monitoring point were higher than that on its windward side, which proved that the motion of airflow caused the particulate matter accumulation on the leeward side and the spreading of particulate matter over the road as air flow rising, so the concentration of particles on the leeward side was the largest, and then gradually decreased as the building height increasing. Under the same condition of aspect ratio, the effect of arbor--shrub-grass configuration on reducing PM10 concentration was the most obvious, followed by the arbor--shrub configuration. The effect of arbor on reducing PM10 concentration was weak and the effect of shrub on that was the weakest. Under the same condition of green configurations, the smaller the street's aspect ratio (the wider the street) was, the greater decrease in the concentration of PM10, which indicated that the wider street was favorable for ventilation and had the lower the concentration of pollutants and vice versa. Comparing the measured data with the numerical simulation data, the coefficient between the measured value and the simulated value was 0.9894, and the correlation between the simulated results and the field observation results was pretty high, so it could be proved that the convection-diffusion model that ENVI-met used was available for simulating the diffusion of atmosphere particulate matter and can give reasonable calculation results of the law of the diffusion of atmosphere particles.