Tokyo Institute of Technology · Environmental Science
Professor Tsubasa Okaze's research lab specializes in environmental fluid mechanics and wind engineering, with a focus on snowdrift dynamics, pedestrian wind environments, and thermal comfort in urban and built environments. The lab develops advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, including large-eddy simulation (LES) and customized k-ε models, to simulate complex interactions between wind, snow particles, and urban structures. A key research direction involves integrating physiological signals such as EEG to enable objective, personalized assessment of thermal comfort for smart environmental control systems. The lab combines field measurements, wind tunnel experiments, and numerical simulations to improve predictive accuracy and practical applications in urban planning and climate-responsive design.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
This study aims to develop a new drifting snow model that solves two transport equations of drifting snow densities of the snow particles falling from the sky and those coming from the ground surface. Because the shape of snow particles falling from the sky is completely different from that of snow particles lifted up from the snow surface which are broken apart by repeated collision with the surface. CFD prediction of snowdrift around a cubic shaped building model using the developed new model
Appropriate large-eddy simulation (LES) guidelines for pedestrian wind environments are being established by the working group of the Architectural Institute of Japan. We conducted LESs for a flow field around an isolated building to clarify the influence of computational conditions on turbulent statistics. We performed a cross-comparison study by examining both experimental and LES results for various computational conditions such as grid arrangements, subgrid scale models, spatial derivation s
This paper was reviewed and accepted by the APCWE-IX Programme Committee for Presentation at the 9th Asia-Pacific Conference on Wind Engineering, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, held from 3-7 December 2017.
Wind tunnel measurements of distributions of wind velocity and transport rate of drifting snow in developing boundary layer above loose and hard snow surfaces were firstly carried out to investigate the characteristics of drifting snow phenomena in a non-equilibrium flowfield. Secondly, a numerical method based on k-ε model was developed, in which the effects of snow particles on the flowfield were considered by adding extra terms in the transport equations of k and ε. Finally, the results of CF
Thermal comfort of humans depends on the surrounding environment and affects their productivity. Several environmental factors, such as air temperature, relative humidity, wind or airflow, and radiation, have considerable influence on the thermal comfort or pleasantness; hence, these are generally controlled by electrical devices. Lately, the development of objective measurement methods for thermal comfort or pleasantness using physiological signals is receiving attention to realize a personaliz
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