Trond-Ola Hågbø defended his PhD thesis with the title “Towards Realistic and Efficient Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations for Urban Wind Applications and Pedestrian Wind Comfort Assessments”.
Hågbo has worked on developing efficient workflows for simulating wind in urban environments, with an emphasis on pedestrian wind comfort. Specifically, exploring the influence of building geometric detail, urban morphology, and the number of simulated wind directions. These are important factors to assess wind effects and safety in increasingly urbanized areas and an increasing number of high-rise buildings. Wind simulations can be an important tool in the planning stage of building projects, and Trond-Olas contributions can make these assessments more accurate, reliable and efficient.
The title of Hågbos trial lecture was “Validation and verification in Computational Wind Engineering (CWE)“.
The assessment committee, Professor Per-Arne Sundsbø, The Arctic University of Norway, Narvik, Associate Professor Alessio Ricci, IUSS School for Advanced Studies, Italy, and Professor Jasna Bogunovic Jacobsen, University of Stavanger, found both the dissertation and the defence satisfactory and recommended that Hågbo was awarded the degree of PhD at the University of Stavanger.
Main supervisor has been Knut Erik Teigen Giljarhus and co-supervisor Professor Emeritus Bjørn Helge Hjertager. The PhD project has been part of the Future Energy Hub and the department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering, and Materials Science. HoD Mona Wetrhus Minde is very happy about the work Hågbo and his supervisors have done in the project. the topic og Hågbos work is directly linked to peoples everyday life, and can be used for both improving urban planning, while also reducing risk with respect to strong winds.
The defence took place at UiS On March 6th, 2025.