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Assessing the impact of forests on local wind conditions in archipelagos: a cfd study

• Ashvinkumar Chaudhari
• Eero Immonen
• Mikael Manngard
• Johan Westoe
• Dennis Bengs

(2023). ECMS 2023, 37th Proceedings
Edited by: Enrico Vicario, Romeo Bandinelli, Virginia Fani, Michele Mastroianni, European Council for Modelling and Simulation.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.7148/2023
ISSN: 2522-2422 (ONLINE)
ISSN: 2522-2414 (PRINT)
ISSN: 2522-2430 (CD-ROM)
ISBN: 978-3-937436-80-7
ISBN: 978-3-937436-79-1 (CD) Communications of the ECMS Volume 37, Issue 1, June 2023, Florence, Italy June 20th – June 23rd, 2023

https://doi.org/10.7148/2023-0341

Ashvinkumar chaudhari, Eero immonen, Mikael manngard, Johan westoe, Dennis bengs (2023). Assessing the Impact of Forests on Local Wind Conditions in Archipelagos: A CFD Study, ECMS 2023, Proceedings Edited by: Enrico Vicario, Romeo Bandinelli, Virginia Fani, Michele Mastroianni, European Council for Modelling and Simulation. doi:10.7148/2023-0341

Ship fairways in archipelagos pass close to small islands with complex terrain and forests. In such areas, local wind conditions deviate from regional forecasts, creating a complex and challenging environment when navigating large vessels. In this article, we carried out Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations for wind flows over a site in the Turku Archipelago, in Finland. We assessed local wind conditions along the fairway with the intent of improving safe passage for large vessels. All simulations were carried out with and without the surrounding forests to elucidate the role of forests in shaping the local wind and turbulence conditions over the site. Our results show that in some regions of the fairway, forests can lower the wind speed to one-third of the magnitude obtained by using terrain-only models. Moreover, turbulence can locally be increased six-fold. We expect that these results will facilitate the development of new smart fairways for ensuring safe navigation through the archipelago in the future.