The challenge
Transmission of virusses increases as more people are located together in a confined space, such as offices, restaurants, classrooms, etc... This was already well known, but the COVID-19 pandemic made us all very aware again of the importance of keeping those spaces safe.
Ensuring good ventilation of the rooms is one of the most important elements to tackle in order to make that happen. But how can you know whether opening a certain window in the room offers enough ventilation or if a mechanical ventilation or air-conditioning system is really required. And if so, what capacity should that system have, which types are more effective, etc...
NUMFLO solution
NUMFLO builds a 3D computation of the entire airflow options in the room, considering both natural and forced ventilation. Different configurations can easily be set up, like the effect of closing and opening any or all windows for example or the sudden stop of a mechanical ventilation system in order to analyse what the "worst case" scenario would be in case of system failure.
Thanks to the high computational resources available at NUMFLO, it is very easy to compute several alternatives at the same time. Experts from NUMFLO can analyze the flow field everywhere inside the room. Regions of poor ventilation can be identified and solutions for improvement can be discussed. Residence time of the airflow inside the room can also be determined and compared to recommended values of air changes per hour.
Particle counters and the COVID-19 pandemic
Accurately measuring the number and size of aerosol particles carrying the COVID-19 virus is critical to the validation of any transmission or circulation model. Particles Plus® sought to apply computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and single-particle tracking simulations the analysis of the flow-field within a particle counter.