Numerical study on the effect of semi-buried straw checkerboard sand barriers belt on the wind speed

In this paper, the spatial variation of wind speed along a straw checkerboard barriers belt and the effect of size and characteristic of the straw checkerboard on the wind speed were studied by computational fluid dynamics. Our results show that the spatial variation of wind speed along a straw checkerboard sand barriers belt can be divided into three stages, i.e., descent stage, stable stage and recovery stage, and the variation of wind speed with height satisfy three different log-linear functions, i.e., the log-linear function below the straw height, the log-linear function between the straw height and the critical height, and the log-linear function above the critical height. The straw height and the leaf area density have obvious influence on the spatial variation of wind speed. And we firstly gave formulas to describe the variation of near-surface wind velocity which had considered the influence of the size and the leaf area density of straw checkerboard barriers. Furthermore, the prediction formula of sand transport rate above straw checkerboard was given based on the ratio of near-surface wind speed and the incoming wind speed. According to these formulas, we can predict the lifetime of the straw checkerboard barriers belt and give optimal design on how to pave straw checkerboard. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.