Airflow Analytical Toolkit (AAT): A MATLAB-based analyzer for holistic studies on the dynamic characteristics of airflows

Abstract

The dynamic characteristics of different airflows on micro-scales have been explored from many perspectives since the late 1970s. On the one hand, most analytical tools and research subjects in previous contributions vary significantly: some only focus on fluctuant velocity features, while others pay attention to directional features. On the other hand, despite the wide variety of existing analytical methods, they are not systematically classified and organized. This paper aims to establish a system including state-of-the-art tools for airflow analysis and to further design a holistic toolkit named Airflow Analytical Toolkit (AAT). The AAT contains two tools, responsible for analyzing the velocity and direction characteristics of airflows, each of which is integrated with multiple analytical modules. To assess the performance of the developed toolkit, we further take typical natural and mechanical winds as cases to show its excellent analytical capability. With the help of this toolkit, the great differences in velocity and directional characteristics among different airflows are identified. The comparative results reveal that not only is the velocity of natural wind more fluctuating than that of mechanical wind, but its incoming flow direction is also more varying. The AAT, serving as a powerful and user-friendly instrument, will hopefully offer great convenience in data analysis and guidance for a deeper understanding of the dynamic characteristics of airflows, and further remedy the gap in airflow analytical tools.