Turbulent Form Drag On Anisotropic Three-Dimensional Orography

Results are presented from a large number of numerical simulations performed to investigate the dependence of the turbulentform drag on three-dimensional ellipsoidal hills upon aspect ratio and wind direction. For isolatedisotropic hills the results are, as expected, found to beindependent of wind direction. However directionaldependence rapidly becomes important as the ridges are elongated,and the results quickly converge onto those obtained in the limitingcase of two-dimensional ridges. Based on the numerical results,a simple parametrization of the drag is proposed.