A Preliminary Numerical Investigation of Airborne Droplet Dispersion in Aircraft Cabins

The emergence of the novel coronavirus has led to a global pandemic which has led to the airline industry facing severe losses. For air travel to recover, airlines need to ensure safe air travel. In this paper, the authors have modeled droplet dispersion after a single breath from an index patient. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are conducted using the k-ωSST turbulence model in ANSYS Fluent. The authors have taken into consideration several parameters such as the size of the mouth opening, the velocity of the cabin air as well as the number of droplets being exhaled by the index patient to ensure a realistic simulation. Preliminary results indicate that after a duration of 20 s, droplets from the index patient disperse within a 10 m2 cabin area. About 75% of the droplets are found disperse for up to 2 m axially behind the index patient. This could possess an enhanced risk to passengers sitting behind the index patient. Ultimately, this paper provides an insight into the potential of CFD to visualise droplet dispersal and give impetus to ensure that necessary mitigating measures can be taken to reduce the risk of infection through droplet dispersal.

Thermal comfort assessment in civil aircraft cabins

Aircraft passengers are more and demanding in terms of thermal comfort. But it is not yet easy for aircraft crew to control the environment control system （ECS） that satisfies the thermal comfort for most passengers due to a number of causes. This paper adopts a corrected predicted mean vote （PMV） model and an adaptive model to assess the thermal comfort conditions for 31 investigated flights and draws the conclusion that there does exist an uncomfortable thermal phe- nomenon in civil aircraft cabins, especially in some short-haul continental flights. It is necessary to develop an easy way to predict the thermal sensation of passengers and to direct the crew to con- trol ECS. Due to the assessment consistency of the corrected PMV model and the adaptive model, the adaptive model of thermal neutrality temperature can be used as a method to predict the cabin optimal operative temperature. Because only the mean outdoor effective temperature ET＊ of a departure city is an input variable for the adaptive model, this method can be easily understood and implemented by the crew and can satisfy 80-90% of the thermal acceptability levels of passen- gers.

Current studies on air distributions in commercial airliner cabins

Abstract Air distribution in commercial airliner cabins is very important for the comfort and health of passengers and crew. Experimental measurements, computational fluid dynamics （CFD） simulations, and inverse modeling are state-of-the-art methods available for studying the air distri- bution. This paper gave an overview of the different experimental models, such as scale models, simplified models, full-scale mockups, and actual air cabins. Although experimental measurements were expensive and time consuming, the data were essential for validating CFD simulations. Different modeling strategies for CFD simulations were also discussed in this paper, including large eddy simulations and Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation modeling. CFD simulations were main stream approaches for studying the air distribution but they could not easily lead to optimal design. Inverse modeling of air distribution has recently emerged into a very powerful and attractive tool for designing the air distribution in airliner cabins, although most of the studies were preliminary.

Analysis of volatile organic compounds emitted from aircraft carpets:comparison using headspace and dynamic chamber tests

Volatile organic compounds(VOCs) emitted from three types of carpets used in aircrafts were compared by using headspace and dynamic chamber tests. The headspace samples contained many compounds that were not detected in the dynamic chamber test; in addition, the dominant VOCs found by these two methods were different. The findings indicate that for highly sorptive materials such as carpets, headspace analysis may give inaccurate indication of actual VOC emissions, and it is necessary to conduct dynamic chamber tests over a certain period of time in order to identify the true emission characteristics. From the dynamic chamber tests, 2-ethyl-1-hexanol was the main VOC emitted from all three carpets. The study also examined the emission characteristics of aircraft carpets. In all experiments, total VOC(TVOC) concentration peaked within a few hours after the start of the experiment and was followed by rapid decay. The emission parameters of TVOC emitted by all three carpets were calculated and the simulated data matched the measured data well.

A model for aircraft cabin evacuation considering passenger type

Pedestrian safety evacuation in aircraft cabins has been a challenging problem because of the aircraft’s unique characteristics,such as the diversity of passengers and the restricted evacuation environment.It is difficult to reproduce evacuation activities in aircraft cabin due to safety concerns and cost constraints.To fill this gap,an improved cellular automaton model of crowd evacuation for aircraft cabin is established by incorporating the characteristics of cabin space structures and passenger attributes.Passengers are divided into healthy individual passengers and disabled-healthy group passengers,whose movement mechanisms are quantified.Based on the constructed model,simulation experiments are conducted using the configuration cabin layout of B737-800 as an example.The results show that the evacuation time is prolonged with increased passenger density and the number of disabled passengers.Moreover,the overall evacuation time is insignificantly affected by whether disabled-healthy group passengers’seats are close to the aisle or window,and the evacuation efficiency is best when their seats are evenly distributed in the cabin.The evacuation time is the shortest when all cabin doors are open,and pedestrians are evacuated the slowest when the central emergency doors are closed.This study pro-vides valuable insights into effective strategies for pedestrian evacuation and crowd emergency management of civil aircraft.

Airborne transmission of virus-laden droplets in an aircraft cabin

This study investigates the airborne transmission of virus-laden droplets generated by a cough of patients in an aircraft cabin to reveal the infection risk of taking an airplane.The influence of the ventilation system on the flow feld of the cabin was analysed to reveal its effects on the airbore transmission ofvirus-laden droplets.Meanwhile.human body heat was also considered in the simulations.The results show that hot plume due to human body hent has a significant impact on the upward movement of virus-laden droplets.The virus-laden droplets expelled by a cough can be transmitted to the region two to three rows away from the generator.Particularly,the transverse motion present in the early stage of the droplet transmission results in a high infection risk to the passengers in the same row as the patient.This work gives insight into the understanding of the airborne transmission of virus-laden droplets in the entire passenger cabin.

Numerical study of the influence of the atmospheric pressure on the thermal environment in the passenger cabin

The cabin air pressure remains lower than the horizontal atmospheric pressure when the airplane is in flight.Air pressure is one of the parameters that must be taken into consideration while studying the thermal environment of an airplane cabin.There are still no reference values for aircraft cabins despite the fact that numerous studies on low pressure heat transfer have demonstrated the connection between convective heat transfer coefficient(CHTC)and air pressure.In this paper,a correction method for CHTC under low pressure conditions was established by using the dummy heat dissipation in the low-pressure cabin experiment.On this basis,a thermal environment simulation model was developed,then was applied to the simulation of a seven-row aircraft cabin containing 42 passengers,and the CHTC and heat loss of dummy surface in the cabin were obtained.Finally,the results of PMV calculated by using heat dissipation and air parameters at sampling points were compared.The results show that the modified CHTC can accurately reflect the cabin thermal environment under low pressure conditions,and the correction of CHTC can be realized by adjusting the turbulent Prandtl number,which is nonlinear correlated with the pressure.The simulation results of the thermal environment in the seven-row cabin show that the CHTC changes by about 42%before and after modification.The air pressure decreases during take-off,which reduces the average CHTC of the crew surface from 5.09 W/(m^(2)·K)to 4.56 W/(m^(2)·K),but the air temperature rises by about 0.2°C as a whole.The deviation of PMV results calculated by using simulated heat loss data and using air parameters of measuring points in space is up to 0.5,but the latter is representative for calculating the thermal comfort level of the whole cabin.