Studying human exposure to vehicular emissions using computational fluid dynamics and an urban mobility simulator:...

A computational system consisting of an urban mobility simulator, validated fluid dynamics and an integral exposure model, is proposed to obtain cyclist and pedestrian exposure to PM_x and NO_x. Pedestrian activities in the urban anthroposphere include walking and running. The computational experiments take place in a computer-generated urban canyon, subject to emissions from diesel and gasoline Euro 5 and Euro 6 vehicular technologies, in continuous and stop-and-go traffic scenarios, and three wind directions at two speeds. The exposure time in the computational domain of slow and fast pedestrians were obtained. Slow pedestrians had exposure times around 17% more than fast pedestrians due to their higher sidewalk residence time. Runners and cyclists decreased their exposures by 57% and 73% respectively compared with walkers. Two traffic scenarios are implemented: one due the presence of a hump and another without a hump. The presence of the hump, increased exposure and fuel consumption by 60% per heavy duty vehicle, about 44-48% per light duty vehicle and about 54-71% per passenger car. Vehicular technology had a large influence on exposure: Heavy duty-Euro 6 vehicle decreased 86% the exposure to PM_2.5 and 66% to NO_X with respect to Euro 5. The proposed computational system provides information on how wind velocity influenced the inhomogeneous pollutant distribution in the street-canyon, causing exposure to be dependent on pedestrian route location. Microscale sidewalk areas in the order of meters containing higher concentrations were thus located. The cleanest routes in the urban canyon were identified. When the wind intensity doubled from 2 to 4 m s^-1, exposure concentration decreased around 45%. The proposed system provides a computational platform to study urban atmospheric fluids, scenarios such as pedestrian routes, vehicular technologies, traffic velocities, meteorological conditions and urban morphology affecting pollution exposure.