Interaction Between Buildings and UAM Infrastructures: Simulation of Wind Paths in the Urban Environment

The development of Urban Air Mobility as an emerging air transportation service requires a proper integration between air and ground infrastructures at the urban scale, whose investigation is still little explored in the literature. For instance, vertiports represent a crucial link between air and ground, requiring careful considerations for their placement. Among the factors most affecting the vertiports location, the wind paths in urban environments should be considered, as they could compromise both safety and security of aircrafts. However, the wind effect at the urban scale is challenging to predict, as it is closely related to the urban morphology, which can also generate turbulence flows. Among the existing methodologies to study urban wind, computational fluid dynamics simulations could be a good approach. The present study aims to explore the interaction between buildings and UAM infrastructure by exploring wind paths in a suburban area of the city of Bari (Southern Italy), where some unoccupied areas are potentially suitable for the location of vertiports. The CFD ENVI-met software has been adopted to perform simulations, showing the strong influence of urban morphology on wind flows, thus requiring accurate wind analyses to support the vertiport placement planning in the urban environment.