Computational Fluid Dynamics Study of Cough Droplet Transport in Aircraft Cabins with Mixing Ventilation

An aircraft cabin is a closed environment in which the fresh air charge gets mixed with various gases and contaminants during the operation, due to which infections get spread amongst the passengers. This study evaluates the decontamination performance of mixed-type cabin ventilation systems, having single-side inlets and dual side inlets. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation is employed to study the flow dynamics of existing ventilation systems in the aircraft cabin. A nozzle device is designed to attach to the existing personal gasper and the same jet is channelised to deflect the exhaled cough droplets toward the cabin outlet. The performance of the device in two side inlet scenarios is evaluated using CFD and compared. It is observed that with the existing gasper system, 3.8% of cough droplets are reaching the breathing zones of co-passengers in the first 5.5 seconds from cough jet initiation. Simulations done with the newly designed nozzle device attached to the gasper showed no droplets reaching the co-passengers breathing zone in both side inlet systems, except for minor changes in droplet trajectories below the seat.