A CFD approach to reduce the risk of Covid-19 airborne transmission in a typical office

Abstract

The Covid-19 virus can spread rapidly in the air and cause the epidemic to rage around the world. This study takes a typical office as the research object and proposes four different partition settings to suppress the spread of the virus in the air based on displacement ventilation. And these strategies are verified by DPM model simulations of two daily situations of indexed person for coughing and talking. This study then employed a modified Wells-Riley model to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies in mitigating the risk of viral infection. As expected, in the absence of a partition, a susceptible person at the other end of the seat greatly increased the risk of infection. Partitions can significantly reduce the risk of infection (100% → 20%), while partitions with a full-wrapped structure can reduce the risk of infection to less than 1%. For the instantaneous release scenario of coughing, the barrier can capture a large particle diameter (>50 μm) particles, and the smaller particle diameter can be discharged out of the room with the thermal plume. The strategies provided in this study can provide recommendations for indoor epidemic prevention and control in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.