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  5. Computational and experimental study of aerosol dispersion in a ventilated room
 
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Computational and experimental study of aerosol dispersion in a ventilated room
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Computational and experimental study of aerosol dispersion in a ventilated room.pdf (2.65 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Downing, George
Hardalupas, Ioannis
Archer, Justice
Symons, Henry E
Baloglu, Ulas Baran
more
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
For many respiratory diseases, a primary mode of transmission is inhalation via aerosols and droplets. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated studies of aerosol dispersion in indoor environments. Most studies of aerosol dispersion present computational fluid dynamics results, which rarely include detailed experimental verification, and many of the computations are complex, making them hard to scale to larger spaces. This study presents a comparison of computational simulations and measurements of aerosol dispersion within a typical ventilated classroom. Measurements were accomplished using a custom-built low-cost sensor network composed of 15 commercially available optical particle sizers, which provided size-resolved information about the number concentrations and temporal dynamics of 0.3–40 µm diameter particles. Measurement results are compared to the computed dispersal and loss rates from a steady-state Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes k-epsilon model. The results show that a newly developed aerosol-transport-model can accurately simulate the dispersion of aerosols and faithfully predict measured aerosol concentrations at different locations and times. The computational model was developed with scalability in mind such that it may be adapted for larger spaces. The experiments highlight that the fraction of aerosol recycled in the ventilation system depends on the aerosol droplet size and cannot be predicted by the recycled-to-outside air ratio. Moreover, aerosol recirculation is not negligible, as some computational approaches assume. Both modeling and measurements show that, depending on the location within the room, the maximum aerosol concentration can be many times higher than the average concentration, increasing the risk of infection.
Date Issued
2022-11-21
Date Acceptance
2022-10-26
Citation
Aerosol Science and Technology, 2022, 57 (1), pp.50-62
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/101177
URL
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2022.2145179
DOI
https://www.dx.doi.org/10.1080/02786826.2022.2145179
ISSN
0278-6826
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Start Page
50
End Page
62
Journal / Book Title
Aerosol Science and Technology
Volume
57
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© 2022 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Identifier
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02786826.2022.2145179
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2022-11-21
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