The predictions of infection risk of indoor airborne transmission of diseases in high-rise hospitals: Tracer gas simulation

The spread of diseases from infected patients within hospitals is resulting in many human casualties. If a virus were to be transmitted through uncontrolled air movement within a hospital and were then to infect other patients or healthy visitors, it would be impossible to contain the spread of the disease. The purpose of this paper is to apply reliable boundary conditions based on previous studies in order to analyze the airflow pattern caused by the stack effect in high-rise hospitals. An analysis was carried out on the vertical airborne transmission of viruses according to the location of the infected patients. The horizontal airborne transmission based on the characteristics of the supply air diffuser and return air grille was also analyzed by using the multi-zone airflow simulation and tracer gas (CFD) simulation. In addition, this paper explored solutions to prevent the spread of airborne pathogenic bacteria by analyzing various alternatives of HVAC systems and basic data on ventilation system planning for high-rise hospitals. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.