Airborne migration behaviour of SARS-CoV-2 coupled with varied air distribution systems in a ventilated space

ABSTRACT

Air distribution system could critically affect SARS-CoV-2 transmission in indoor space;therefore, this study aims at demonstrating numerical characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 migration with varied air distribution system configurations. Seven cases were investigated regarding three major aspects how fast suspended particles can be removed from the ventilated space or changed into deposited particles;how much particles are attached to various object surfaces which leads to an infection by touching fomite. All cases were analyzed through computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Both different shapes (round or linear diffusers) and installation locations (ceiling or floor) of inlet and outlet diffusers were investigated. Results showed that different air distribution system would lead to different dispersion profiles of infectious particles and different deposition pattern of particles on interior surfaces. With the same air flow rate, linear-diffuser would perform better for CO2 extraction while requiring less time to remove or collide the same magnitude of suspended droplets compared to round-diffuser. However, how quickly removed or suspended droplets collide is not proportional to how less the number of total particles are remained. Two additional cases with double sized space possessing best ventilation configuration were also examined to explore potential application of the best-ventilated configuration to various spatial expansion cases.