An Improved Air Distribution System for Infection Reduction in Economy-Class Passenger Airplanes

Abstract

In a previous work performed by the authors, a Personalized Ventilation (PV) system, combined with Under Floor Air Distribution (UFAD) has been found to provide an air shield between passengers in an airplane and reduce the chances of viruses spreading. A new PV system with a front-back design has been adopted. Combined with UFAD, the new system has achieved thermal comfort for the passengers, as well as a reduction of contaminants spreading. However, the PV system can be further improved by changing the air inlet and outlet configurations. In this work, two new PV system configurations are investigated with changed locations of the air outlets. In addition to an improved air shield between passengers and hence better infection reduction, the new configurations have also improved the predictive mean vote to the value of 0.51, and the predicted percentage dissatisfied to 13.9%.