Issue |
E3S Web of Conf.
Volume 396, 2023
The 11th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality, Ventilation & Energy Conservation in Buildings (IAQVEC2023)
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Article Number | 02029 | |
Number of page(s) | 8 | |
Section | Ventilation and Airflow in Buildings | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202339602029 | |
Published online | 16 June 2023 |
Investigation of aerosol dispersion and air purifier performance in a hospital patient room using CFD and measurements
1 School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada
* Corresponding author: mchan912@student.ubc.ca
Transmission of airborne disease is a concern in many indoor spaces. Recent studies have identified correlations between poor indoor air quality (IAQ) and COVID-19 vulnerability and mortality. Studying the role building design and ventilation play in both the spread and mitigation of airborne viruses in high-density spaces is thus imperative. However, guidance for IAQ improvement and COVID-19 risk mitigation is general and insufficient for specific application in at-risk spaces like British Columbia’s (BC) patient settings and long-term care homes. What remains underdefined is a workflow for translating site specific data on indoor aerosol spread into actionable tools health officials can use towards building retrofit and intervention planning. The objective of this project was thus to develop a library of ‘digital twin’ models of at-risk indoor spaces that can provide accurate and rapid investigations of indoor air quality improvement measures using computation fluid dynamics (CFD) software. To calibrate these models, 41 repeated controlled experiments of aerosol dispersion and removal were conducted to assess the ventilation patterns of a 4-bed hospital room. From these experiments, a 3D CFD model of the room was created using the RhinoCFD modelling package, calibrated with measured IAQ sensor data, and validated against the results of the live study. This paper presents the methodology and in-progress results of this CFD modelling process.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2023
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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