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Impact of a moving person on transmission of airborne contaminants in airliner cabins
Abstract
In 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) affected more than 8000 patients and caused 774 deaths in 26 countries across five continents within months after its emergence in rural China. The pandemic illustrated the dramatic role of globalization and air travel in the dissemination of an emerging infectious disease. Other cases of airborne infectious diseases transmitted in airliners in recent years include tuberculosis, influenza, measles, and mumps. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a very attractive tool in studying the transmission of airborne contaminants in an airliner cabin as it is inexpensive and flexible in changing thermo-fluid conditions inside the cabins compared to experimental measurements. Due to many approximations used in CFD, its results should always be validated using high quality experimental data. By using the measured velocity fields obtained from a small-scale, water cabin mockup, this study found that CFD can capture the fundamental flow features although the discrepancies between the measured and computed results exist. The validated CFD model was then used to study gaseous contaminant transport inside an airliner cabin. The CFD results show that the movement of a person might have resulted in the spread of SARS viruses to the passengers seated far away from the contagious passenger in the flight from Hong Kong to Beijing in 2003.
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Potential causalities due to airborne disease transmission and risk of chem-bio terrorism in commercial airliner cabins can be reduced by fast responses. Fast responses are only possible by using sensors at appropriate locations in the cabins. Cost, size and weight factors restrict the number of sensors that could be installed inside a cabin. Since release locations and seating patterns of passengers can impact airborne contaminant transports, this study first addressed this impact by using a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program in a four-row mockup of twin-aisle airliner cabin. It was observed that occupancy patterns and release locations have little influence on longitudinal contaminant transports though localized variations of contaminant concentrations may exist. The results show that response time of the sensors is considerably reduced with the increase in number of sensors. If only a single sensor is available across a cabin cross-section then it should be placed at the middle of the ceiling. A cabin model of a fully occupied twin-aisle airliner with 210 seats was also build to study the diverse contaminant distribution trends along cabin length. The results reveal that seating arrangements can make cross-sectional airflow pattern considerably asymmetrical. Similar airflow patterns make the longitudinal contaminant transport in the business and economy classes alike. The presence of galleys greatly affected the longitudinal transport of contaminants in a particular cabin section. The effects due to galleys were less significant if a multipoint sampling system was used. The multipoint sampling system can also reduce the number of sensors required in a cabin.