Influence of different air distribution on ventilation effectiveness in negative pressure hospital wards

¹ School of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
² Key Laboratory of Performance Evolution and Control for Engineering Structures of Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
³ College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Tongji Architectural Design (Group) Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China.

^* Corresponding author: 2132739@tongji.edu.cn

Abstract

Hospital ward is one of non-negligible potential places to occur cross-infection among patients and health workers. Air-borne transmission was regarded as the main infection route of the SARS-CoV-2. Preventing the air-borne transmission should be a significant measure, which could effectively mitigate the risk of the virus infection. Based on those consideration, in this study, the influence of different types of air distribution on ventilation effectiveness was modeled through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. Several typical negative pressure wards same as the ward in Wuhan Thunder God Mountain hospital and conformed to the Chinese National Health Commission (NHC) guidelines were modelled. We simulated the influence of different locations of air supply inlets, analysed the influence of the buffer door and compared the contaminant concentration on different entry route for health workers. The results show that the air distribution required by NHC guidelines could retain a directional airflow from the bed-zone to the toilet, which also has a better accessibility of supply air, and health workers are safer to avoid standing closed to the air exhaust outlet in the downstream area of pollutants during ward rounds.