Leakage of exhaled contaminant

from airborne infection isolation

room due to medical staff walking
motion
Seongmin Jo , Minki Sung
Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea
 1.Introduction
• The AII (airborne infection isolation) room is a facility which maintains
depressurized against adjacent spaces to prevent the spread of
contaminated air from room.
• The negative pressure of the AII room is well maintained when the doors
are closed
• However, AII room cannot momentarily maintain negative pressure when
the door opens due to medical staffs’ entry and exit.
• In this study, CFD was used to observe the contaminant spread rate when
medical staff exits the ward.
2.
Geometry
Materials/Methods Floor area = 16.5 m2
2 Supply, 2 exhaust

Boundary Conditions
Medical staff walking speed = 1.2
m/s

Ashrae standard 170-2017

Ward = 15 ACH
Anterroom = 10 ACH
Differential pressure = 2.5 Pa
 2. Materials/Methods
Three cases were conducted to observe contaminant
leakage from ward during different human walking
motion

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3

human walking move with swing move
motion with motion without horizontally
shoulder, hip and knee rotation without any
knee rotation rotation of
arms and legs

* Knee and hip rotation angle data was acquired from Winter (1990)
 Human starts to walk from the center
of the ward towards sliding door.
When door fully opens human walk
towards anteroom and door closes
after human fully passes the doorway.

Human walking and sliding door moving sequence

3. Results and
Discussion
 The steady state simulation result
showed about 8 pa pressure
difference

The transient case (1, 2, 3) result

showed pressure difference of AII
and anteroom became zero as
soon as the door opened.

Concentration of exhaled contaminant before walking

into anteroom.
Case 1
Concentration of exhaled contaminant in each case during the human walking out of AII room.

leakage of contaminant was observed around body and mostly at toe and knee due to
high rotation speed of knee.
Case 2
Concentration of exhaled contaminant in each case during the human walking out of AII room.

Due to slower rotation rate than knee rotation, less contaminant was observed at toe
and knee. Uniform contaminant spread was confirmed around body and whole leg
area.
Case 3
Concentration of exhaled contaminant in each case during the human walking out of AII room.

contaminant was observed around whole body but less contaminant was confirmed
due to no rotation of the hip and knee. Most of the contaminant spread on the upper
body part compared to other body parts.
Average contaminant concentration of anteroom after moving sequence

• Case 1 and 2 showed similar result due to

leg movement.

• Case 2 which had swing motion in legs

showed the highest concentration

• Case 3 showed great difference in

contaminant concentration compared to
Case 1 and 2. Less contaminant spread from
ward due to less movement of body parts.
Average contaminant concentration of anteroom during moving sequence

• Case 3 which showed the lowest

contaminant concentration showed the
fastest reduction compared to Case 1 and 2.
• Case 1 and 2 showed similar reduction rate
Table 1. Peak contaminant concentration of AII compared with anteroom

Case 3 showed the lowest peak

concentration of 0.22%. Case 1
and 2 showed similar peak
concentration.
 4. Conclusion
• The spread of contaminant to anteroom can be low when the both AII and
anteroom has high ACH and high pressure difference.
• Human movement in CFD showed low contaminant spread from AII.
Proper walking motion should be adopted to confirm accurate
contaminant spread from AII.