Abstract View
Effects of Ventilation Strategy and Social Distancing on Inhalation Exposure to Airborne Respiratory Aerosols
GEN PEI, Mary Taylor, Donghyun Rim, Penn State University
Abstract Number: 451
Working Group: Aerosol Exposure
Abstract
Airborne disease transmission via respiratory aerosols is one of the major routes of the spread of the infectious diseases. Ventilation and social distancing are two widely recognized control strategies to reduce the airborne infection risk in indoor environments. However, little information is available on how inhalation exposure to infectious aerosols varies with ventilation strategy and social distance. The objective of this study is to provide a better understanding of the efficacy of ventilation strategy and social distancing in control of inhalation exposure to respiratory aerosols. This study employed the Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations of the aerosol transport in the ventilated rooms and performed the infection risk assessment. The study results show that indoor airflow patterns associated with ventilation strategy have notable impacts on the concentration of respiratory aerosols in the human breathing zone. In the buoyancy-driven flow regime (that can be found in many residential buildings and naturally-ventilated rooms), the exhaled aerosols due to talking of an infector can penetrate into the other occupant’s breathing zone within 1 min, which leads to elevated human exposure to the aerosols. In such cases, a 2 m (6 ft) social distance between occupants is not sufficient to effectively reduce the infection risk. Our results also reveal that the virus transmission risk is highly dependent on the aerosol emission mode (e.g., talking and breathing) and initial exhaled airspeed.