Journal
INDOOR AIR
Volume 32, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ina.13015
Keywords
aerosol; CFD; disease transmission; probabilistic model; risk; well-mixed
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Funding
- College of Engineering at the University of Michigan
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This article develops a simple model for assessing the risk of airborne disease transmission in indoor spaces. By simulating airflow in classrooms, lecture halls, and buses, the spatial distribution of expiratory droplet nuclei is quantified, taking into account non-uniform mixing. The study finds that the spatial non-uniformity can be accurately described by a shifted lognormal distribution.
We develop a simple model for assessing risk of airborne disease transmission that accounts for non-uniform mixing in indoor spaces and is compatible with existing epidemiological models. A database containing 174 high-resolution simulations of airflow in classrooms, lecture halls, and buses is generated and used to quantify the spatial distribution of expiratory droplet nuclei for a wide range of ventilation rates, exposure times, and room configurations. Imperfect mixing due to obstructions, buoyancy, and turbulent dispersion results in concentration fields with significant variance. The spatial non-uniformity is found to be accurately described by a shifted lognormal distribution. A well-mixed mass balance model is used to predict the mean, and the standard deviation is parameterized based on ventilation rate and room geometry. When employed in a dose-response function risk model, infection probability can be estimated considering spatial heterogeneity that contributes to both short- and long-range transmission.
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