AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Mathematical Models for Bioinformed Design of Indoor Spaces: Integrated CFD Simulation of Fungi Sporulation and Transport
SHAMIA HOQUE, USC
Abstract Number: 174 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract Bioinformed design is centered on understanding the indoor microbial population and intends to direct the change of this in a way that will be beneficial to the residents. To understand how the microbial population in a building will respond to a perturbation, the fundamental interactions between a bioaerosol and its indoor habitat has to be investigated and the relationship among them defined. The objective of the current study is to determine the influence of the indoor environment on the fate and transport of fungal spores from mold. The study consists of the building of a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-sporulation model, designing a series of numerical simulations and extracting a user – friendly mathematical model from the simulation results. The CFD – sporulation model was developed to simulate spore growth and transport in an indoor space with walls infected by mold (due to dampness). The CFD model consists of sub-modules for hygrothermal analysis which accounts for the effect of temperature change, relative humidity effects of the outdoor on the indoor ambience, air flow (Large Eddy Simulation) which simulates the air flow pattern in the ventilated space and spore transport (Lagrangian method) which tracks the spores once released from the infected location in the room. Any spore which deposits is treated as another source for continuing mold growth on the surface if the spore falls on a surface with the right temperature and humidity conditions. The sporulation module simulates the spore growth i.e. how many spores will be released given the conditions obtained from the hygrothermal module. Laboratory experiments are being conducted for model validation. It is anticipated that this work will be a framework to be applied for other bioaerosols.