Characterization of Hurricane Boundary Layer Turbulence

Numerical simulations of hurricanes using models such as WRF rely on simple parameterizations of the boundary layer that do not resolve turbulence. Since observational studies of the hurricane boundary layer (HBL) are limited, high-fidelity numerical approaches such as large-eddy simulations (LES) provide a fruitful pathway to study HBL turbulence. However, the stringent resolution requirements of an LES make it computationally challenging to simulate an entire hurricane. Recent studies have suggested LES frameworks to simulate HBL turbulence outside the eyewall in smaller domains that take large-scale hurricane dynamics into account. In this work, we use the approach described in Momen et al. (2021) to generate a large database of HBL flows, programmatically varying input parameters such as radial distance, baroclinicity strength, surface roughness, etc., and analyze the sensitivity of flow statistics to these variations. The focus is on quantities that are of interest from a wind engineering perspective, analyzed using time-series and flux budgets. These include mean wind, second-order statistics, wind gust factors, and spectral flow characteristics. This work aims to develop improved mean wind and turbulence parameterizations for the evaluation of wind loads on structures.