Experimental investigation of wind flow characteristics over hills and escarpments - A review

A comprehensive knowledge of the wind flow in hilly terrains is of great interest in many engineering applications, be it wind energy distribution for suitable site selection for wind farms, pollution dispersion, forest fire propagation or agro-meterological studies. Several researchers have shown that wind flow over a hilly terrain may be significantly different when compared with the wind flow over a flat terrain. Complex hilly terrains may alter the wind speed to a great extent. Therefore, this effect of terrain must be properly assessed by designers and planners to arrive at a proper wind flow distribution. This paper reviews the work done in this area over the past three decades. Wind flow over two-dimensional hills and two-dimensional escarpments investigated in wind tunnels by various researchers is presented in this paper.