Design of economic PODS to safeguard against contagious diseases using computational fluid dynamics (CFD)

Abstract

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, namely Covid-19, one of the greatest pandemics in human history posed some new challenges to the human beings for its prevention and control as it is an airborne respiratory disease and highly contagious. The most common practices suggested by WHO and government of India are; to wear a face mask, keep social distancing etc. It becomes much more important when the whole world is opening its economy. In such situations, there are a number of places where maintaining social distances or wearing a face mask is quite a tough job for example Laboratories and eating messes and canteens of schools and colleges. Thus, the present studies focus on the designing of economic PODS which may be helpful in controlling the spread of airborne disease in mass gathering places like in educational institutions in particular laboratories and eating messes. The present studies first emphasize on the flow field analysis of human cough by assuming it as a turbulent jet using CFD. Then, based on the physical dimensions covered by the coughing jets a further detailed study is conducted on 23 number of PODS of various shapes and sizes using CFD to select a suitable POD so that the effect of coughing in a laboratory/mess can be minimized to contain the infections. A POD with 1 m length and 30 cm height having an arc inside (POD 20) is found to be the best POD to contain the airborne infections.