Airflow Simulation over a Vegetated Soil Surface

The performance of infrared sensors under various meteorological and soil-surface conditions is a perennial concern for remote characterization of local environments. To aid in the testing and improvement of these sensors, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can provide realistic simulations of ambient airflow and temperature conditions. High CFD grid resolution is generally required for capturing the physical properties of a given region of interest, which may contain rocks, bushes, grasses, and other vegetation. In this study, the PAR3D model is used to compute spatially variable wind speeds and air temperatures, which will be coupled (in future work) with surface heat-exchange functions in ground-water and vegetation models. The resulting soil, rock, and vegetation temperatures can then be used to compute infrared images for these features, and the synthetic images can ultimately be used to test sensor performance. Thus, the eventual aim of the airflow, heat-transfer, and infrared computations is the production of high-resolution, synthetic infrared imagery for realistic surface environments.