Simulation of the Turbulent Dispersion of 10 Micron Particles in a Generic Half-Cabin Model

Study of particle dispersion in ventilated indoor environments is a very useful and effective way to understand the mechanism for disease transmission in an enclosed environment. In this investigation, a computational approach is adopted in order to gain more knowledge about the transport of particulate materials in a simplified half cabin model of a Boeing 767. The simulations are performed using a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software and are validated through comparing the predictions with the corresponding experimental measurements. The Lagrange-Euler approach is invoked in the simulations. In this approach, while the air is considered as the continuous first phase, the particles are treated as the discrete second phase. By solving the particles equation of motion, the trajectory of particles is computed. The discrete phase equation of motion is coupled with the continuous phase governing equations through the calculation of drag and buoyancy forces acting on particles. The continuous phase flow is turbulent and Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) is employed in the calculation of velocity field. A complete study on grid dependence of RANS simulation is performed through a controllable local mesh refinement scheme. The grid dependence study shows that using unstructured grid with tetrahedral and hybrid elements in the refinement region are more efficient than using structured grid with hexahedral elements. The effect of turbulence on particle dispersion is taken into account by using a stochastic tracking method (random walk model). Through the comparison of computational predictions with corresponding experimental measurements the capability of Discrete Phase Model (DPM) in predicting the behavior of particles is studied.