Atmospheric Flow at Alcantara Launch Center

The Alcantara Launch Center (ALC) is the main Brazilian access to space. It positioned over a complex terrain, and it has some important buildings for assembling, integration launching activities, such as Mobile Integration Tower. Being in region of prevalent trade winds, flow interaction between terrain can affect safety operations on platform, dispersion toxic gases emitted during launching. objective this work was study influence topography atmospheric ALC using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. Three geometries were considered: simplified (case 1), smooth 2), roughness 3). conditions simulated ANSYS Fluent 19.0 CFD commercial code. numerical simulations used realizable ?-? model turbulence effects results presented good agreement with in-situ field measurements most geometry clearly influences pattern at ALC, cliff wind being major cause establishing patterns.